


Great House

by Maggisakura



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universes, F/M, Gambling, Gen, I still deserve a hundred peeled mangoes for this, Ignores Cursed Child (except if I decide to include it as an afterthought AU), Illustrated, International wizarding communities, Kidnapping, M/M, Multi, No Smut, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, People Change People, Riddle your goals have never been noble, School Life, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Underage Sex, Voldemort isn't and has never been a philanthropist, What happens when the ministry catches a time-traveller, Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter), You can make fanart of this fanfiction, child away from her parents, selfcest between the horcruxes when they're in the mood, they roped the Lord into doing things he normally doesn't do, time-travel which isn't used to fix things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 08:14:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23968204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggisakura/pseuds/Maggisakura
Summary: The Potters lead a happy life full of strange happenings and whatnots until it's Lily's tenth birthday and she disappears without a trace. She finds herself found by the ministry and the following events mark the many changes done onto time itself and we shall see how a single wizard can affect so many lives with its existence. Or maybe nothing changes except the poor girl so out of her depth and forced to live a life so patchworked it resembles a Greek tragedy. Voldemort doesn't mind because he's only after the future in myriad of ways. One of the questions just is, is this even time travel?This is not a fix-it fic though some characters try hard. This is just an unfortunate happening.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Lily Luna Potter/Tom Riddle, Lily Luna Potter/Voldemort, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Teddy Lupin/Victoire Weasley
Comments: 25
Kudos: 24





	1. That Which Falls Behind

Harry had a cup of tea and felt better. The forenoon’s twelve o’clock broadcast ranted in the background and Ginny sat, once again, on a simple chair on the other side of St Mungo’s bed, digging for a lip balm from her satchel. Warm, golden, artificial light radiated from the room’s only window onto Ginny’s freckled face, when she wet her lips and smiled at a hand-mirror, which she held in her other hand. The Auror on the other side of the bed shrugged and glanced at the woman’s act. Harry had three different letters in his hand and he smiled at one of them.

“I’ll become a teacher for a while,” Harry said and tapped the parchment.

“That’s a fine way to spend your sick leave,” Ginny smiled and put the hand-mirror back to her satchel. She stroked under her nose with her thumb quickly. “Will you get an assistant?” 

“We’ll see. How do you fare without me?” Harry turned towards the other man who was taller than him.

“Athdar’s trial continues tomorrow but you’re unlikely to see me then,” said the tall and tanned Auror. He had sand-grey hair and a small beard to embellish his chin. His long leather coat touched his knees and was wet here and there. Weird Sister’s _I Want to Meet You_ started going off on the radio and made the corners of the man’s mouth rise. The door to the room opened and a nurse came in when Harry and the Auror had a talk. The woman came with a cart and took three tea cups from the nightstand along with their saucers, one big plate that had a plastic wrapper on it. In their place she placed a vase full of shining blue Lilies of the Nile. She moved over to take hospital clothes from the cart and to place them in the closet. Harry fixed the collar of his lime green hospital robe.

The Auror had asked a certain law-expert for an opinion on the case and was explaining its details to Harry. “I wrote notes about these and I’ll have them sent to you after I’m gone. These things shouldn’t be guessed – the case is clear. The man will go to a jail that rehabilitates him and his son will be taken into custody. We don’t need Azkaban for this.”

”That’s good.” Harry smiled and corrected the posture of his glasses on his face. He ruffled his own wild hair a bit, which made Ginny’s mouth form a smile.

“You need a barber. I don’t know how to cut a hair that long,” she laughed. Harry’s hair reached his shoulders and it was adorned by a plait that had been made by Lily a couple of days ago. He hadn’t dared to disentangle it.

”Oh yeah, I should go…” he left the sentence incomplete and took out another letter and onto its corner he immediately wrote: _seen on 3.10.2017._ Harry touched a thick binder on top of the bed and took a receipt from there. He compared two different documents and asked for the other man’s opinion on the subject.

“Ginny, is it possible you go outside for a moment?” Harry asked, glancing at his wife.

“I’ll go for a walk-”

“This’ll take longer. Quinnwill lead people here and we’ll talk about things. You can write your story at home.”

“Well, have fun,” Ginny commented and brushed her hair. She set a packed of tissues on to the bedside table and patted his bent knee when she got out of her chair. Ginny left at the same time as the nurse.

Ginny had only received a short note from Auror Percival on the next day after the incident had happened a few weeks ago. The note had made her blood run cold and she had eyed it for only a short while before disappearing to find a way to Harry. She had been met with quotes about intensive care and no visitors allowed and had been told it was bad.

Harry had three broken ribs and a missing left lung. It was why he was at a hospital, on its fourth floor, after two weeks. Ginny had taken care of his errands when able and when they didn’t concern his job at the ministry.

Ginny had tried to find herself amongst the chaos and one tiny room in St Mungo’s ward had turned into her safe haven. She could feel whatever she wanted to over there with Harry. At least she saw him and she didn’t have to guess how he was. She noticed, once again, that she was watching the opening hours of the hospital under the gaze of Dilys Derwent. The recent budding smile had disappeared from her face and in its place, there was solemn countenance.

_From Monday to Thursday 10-18 o’clock_

_On Friday 10-16 o’clock_

_From Saturday till Sunday 9-20 o’clock._

Ginny’s hand clamped on the strap of her satchel and she bit her tongue. After that she turned to face the front door and disappeared into London’s throng.

* * *

The weather was cloudy at the Burrow and Lily didn’t bother to go outside with the looming of rain. Molly had hung the clothesline full of laundry, which she was now in haste to tuck away, as Lily, pressed against the upstairs window, watched the clouds. She had played with Hugo, had eaten a simple dinner and had had a short afternoon nap before the distant boom of thunder had woken her up. Her unfinished letter that flaunted a simple drawing of Harry with a ball in front of a house rested on the desk.

_Dear dad,_

_I hope you get better soon. I can’t play soccer without you so I hope they cure you quickly. Hugo can’t play it very well and grandma Molly can’t play at all._

_With love, Lily._

She remembered the entire letter because she had spent much of the midday in writing it. Lily had quickly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t find the right words, so she had spent the rest of the period in smudging the picture.

Molly had come downstairs to brew a kettle of Earl Grey tea. It fumed from its spout on a cold stove when Lily’s grandmother was crouching to see if there were biscuits and other things to eat to be found at the cabinets. Soon Hugo and Lily joined her and Lily warmed her hands against a warm cup into which Molly had poured tea. The fresh laundry had been thrown into a laundry basket that stood in front of the kitchen door. You could hear ducks cackling outside as they ran into the barn to escape the rain. 

As Hugo hoarded biscuits onto his plate, there was a sudden rousing green fire lit in the Weasley family’s fireplace, which startled Lily, making her drop her own biscuit into her cup. She felt simultaneously very shocked but also relieved, when Ginny strutted out from the fireplace in her jeans and checked shirt, holding onto her large satchel that was bulging.

“Where’s Lily?” Ginny asked and tossed her locks of hair behind her shoulder. Her hair was damp and her checked shirt clammy as she paced in the Burrow. Wilburg, Hermione’s cat, groomed himself in the living room’s armchair and was in the most bendy position.

“Mom, I’m here!” Lily shouted, raising her head and fished the dropped biscuit back onto her plate.

“That’s nice. The weather’s terrible today. It rained in London,” Ginny stated to Molly, who had gone to give her daughter a fresh towel. “Mom, what time is it? There’s supposed to be a broadcast at two o’clock.” Ginny gave Molly a tint of a smile and smoothed her own hair harshly.

“Here, let me help you,” Molly said and urged Wilburg to leave his armchair. Ginny sat in the chair then and sighed deeply when she had laid her satchel on the ground. She eyed the empty table in front of her for a while as she dried her hair. “It wasn’t supposed to rain in London at all,” Molly blurted and circled back to the kitchen. Lily came to hug her mother at the same time as a steaming cup of tea and a warm sandwich were laid in front of her.

“Thank you,” Ginny said and held Lily. “Well, how do you do? We’ll go and see dad in St Mungo’s later today.”

“Yes, let’s go,” Lily answered. “I have a letter for father.”

“We’ll deliver it to him later today.” Ginny sipped a large gulp of the warm tea and shook her frozen hands a bit. Lily followed with curiosity when Molly brought the radio. Ginny emptied her satchel onto the living room table and readied her pen for writing.

“Are you going to work?” Lily asked as Wilburg purred by her feet. There was a sound of thunder from outside.

“Yes. I need a bit of peace here,” Ginny commented calmly.

“You two need to go upstairs so that you won’t bother your mother any more.” Molly took a look at the children and wiped her hands on her apron. She was wearing a brown dress with a linen apron. Molly’s hair was greying here and there and she was wearing two pairs of colorful woolen socks. Lily pinched her lips to a straight line and watched her grandmother and Ginny every now and then.

“I want to go outside,” she said.

“You can’t, it’s thundering,” Molly answered. There was a two o’clock chime from the radio and news started going off in the background. Ginny turned the volume up at the same time as Lily talked with Molly.

_”And now we’ll tell about the robbery that has shaken entire Europe. Last week around four o’clock in the evening, there was a successful train robbery in which four Aurors got injured, according to the French National Bureau of Investigation. The robbery was performed with handguns and involved three unknown wizards but also five Muggles. The train was en route to Switzerland and as of now, there have been no reports as to what the train carried along its path. There have been some clues which point to the French central bank and to a bombing done last month in Belgium. The experts have started handling the robbery as-“_

“That’s awful to hear,” Ginny muttered and Molly nodded. “You try and write about sports in this climate.” Ginny closed her eyes a bit and reached to take the towel off from her nexk. Lily stared at the radio in curious silencen and listened to its broadcast.

“ _\- last time a robbery of this magnitude happened was five years ago in Minsk. We’ve employed every bit of manpower we can to solve this case and my trust in my team is very high._ ”

 _“How would you describe the Muggles that were involved?”_ The reporter asked.

_”They have gone through a memory manipulation charm so we have yet to figure out who was behind this attack. It is very likely they have been promised some form of compensation for their work. This isn’t about terrorism, it is more than likely due to the rising nationalism. In our opinion, we should cover this case as quickly as possible, especially as we’ve yet to figure out what was stolen from the train-“_

”Just go now. You two don’t need to listen to this kind of talk.” Molly escorted Lily and Hugo out from the living room when Ginny put her pen behind her ear and rummaged through her stacks of parchment and paper and took up a huge pad. There was a big catalogue of the world’s every Quidditch league, a parchment which got updated with the latest news of players’ accidents and achievements and a big map that had three different games going on around it. Tiny dots flew around an oval with great speed and sometimes, when a goal was made, rivers of ink spread from hoops, which stood at both ends of the oval. Ginny tapped the map once and now only a singly game was visible on the parchment. Molly laid her hand gently on Ginny’s shoulder.

“The children can stay here for as long as you like, if you want.”

“Let’s talk about this later.” Ginny’s face turned gloomy and she rubbed her hands together. She changed the radio broadcast and soon the room was filled with Quidditch dialogue. Molly walked into the kitchen to wash the dishes and peel potatoes, when Ginny leaned back in the armchair and let out a great sigh. She raised her other leg on top of the other and crossed her hands. Her mouth still had the flavour of the wild turkey and cheese sandwich.

´ _What if he doesn’t get any better? What if he can’t run anymore or play soccer with Lily? What then?_ ´ Ginny felt indescribable worry for Harry. Her mouth tightened into a line and the corners of her mouth became strained. Eyes sparkling, Ginny felt like she was on the high seas and she didn’t know where the next ill-luck and hardship would come bite them. Her thoughts, which were supposed to be kept at Quidditch, circled around to Harry’s chest and to her man’s gentle smile. She had already brought biscuits and flowers with her. Suddenly she didn’t know what else she should bring with her except Lily.

Ginny leaned forward and put her head against her praying hands. She dragged her tanned and callous palms against her face and let out another sigh.

“Dear, do you need help with anything?” Arthur asked when he came downstairs in his pair of slippers. Speech carried off from the kitchen and Molly sounded troubled when Kenmare Kestrel beat Pride of Portree.

On that day, Ginny couldn’t concentrate on Quidditch at all.

* * *

Adken from Slytherin verified the rumours for the third time already. His father didn’t sell large cauldrons illegally in Ireland and he didn’t know who was the first to have started this nasty controversy. But now some of Gryffindor’s girls and Slytherin’s Quidditch team were at odds due to a ludicrous rumour.

“Why don’t they ever talk of anything rational here,” Rose complained and opened a large epic in front of her. There unfolded a long list of old wizarding wear. Blatant silken veils, linen and wool clothes decorated with gold and silver threads, as well as Spanish cloaks dyed with henna and crustaceans awakened to splendor on the pages of _Witch and Wizard’s Garment Observatory_ book.

“There’s always been rumours here. Someone must have insulted someone and that guy spread the rumours,” James said and poked Albus in the side. The calm of the library made them listless. The dust specks dancing in the sunlight showed up between the library shelves. Some almost adult boy was let into the Restricted Section.

On this Sunday, they had been in the library from the early morning. Rose was spending much time staring at a golden embroidered wizarding robe on the page and was reading the tiny print below the picture, when Albus leaned against his propped-up hand and watched as Scorpius Malfoy loaned his fifth book from Madam Pince. Rose raised her nose from the book and snapped her fingers in front of Albus.

“You were supposed to do your homework today,” the girl remarked brusquely and squinted at the boy. At that moment the page was being adorned by a tunic with a decorative edge worn by an oriental man. Albus yanked his book open, annoyed and bored. In his mind there was an inerasable memory of a letter he’d received a couple of weeks ago.

_Dad is alright. We’re monitoring the situation now. I’ll tell you if anything changes._

_Xxx, mom._

Rose’s face had an inconspicuous smile. When she followed the sentence in front of her with a finger, her eyelashes drew shadows on her cheeks gracefully. The wavy red hair of Rose poured over her shoulder and to her lap and she had to preen her hair back every now and then.

”I can’t deal with this,” Albus whined and closed the book laying in front of him. He stretched his arms and set them down on the table and put his head on top of them. The boy let out a harrowing sigh.

“I think you should deal with it. Otherwise you’ll be left behind by the others,” Rose marked in a well-intentioned manner and turned a page. Then she smiled at Albus. “I can help with the essays.”

“This book has been returned in a poor condition,” Madam Pince’s voice carried over to their ears. A boy sitting a few chairs down the line turned to face the reception desk in wonder.

“I’m sorry,” Scorpius said and Madam Pince sighed. She took out her wand and tapped the pages of the book a few times.

”You should see to it so that this doesn’t repeat itself. Otherwise I’ll ban you from ever loaning from my library again,” the woman retorted back. Scorpius stroked the back of his skull and handed over the rest of his books to her. They had been floating next to him in a neat pile. Scorpius seemed to deflate afterwards.

Albus thought it was cool that someone knew how to stack the books in such a nice pile and hover the entire clunker a few meters further away.

* * *

A month later Harry had frequent visitors and his bearings had gotten altogether better. He could already walk the stairs and have discussions that lasted more than half an hour, so work followed him into the hospital. When he would get out, he had been invited to dinner to two different places and he had promised to go. Auror Quinn had held his end of the bargain and brought Harry notes on the happenings and meetings that had been had when he had been sick. Harry had also seen Lucius Malfoy visit St Mungo’s due to a sore throat, but he hadn’t talked with the man at all. Witty comments and sarcastic style of speech didn’t fascinate Harry in these days at all, so he avoided ex-Death Eaters here and there. Not that you saw many of them these days.

 _´It’s become a symbol of hatred.´_ Harry thought when he skimmed a history book he had loaned from the hospital’s library. ´ _It’s always been a symbol of hatred_.´ On the page stood out a large picture of the Dark Mark. The picture didn’t move but its carefully drawn confines sank into his gaze. He didn’t react to it as quickly and so in thoughts as he usually did. Maybe it had to do with the fact he had been regrown his second lung or then he had become institutionalized but right now it didn’t spark any feelings in him.

Harry turned a page. He hadn’t loaned the book because of the Mark. In its pages had been stored many different symbols around the wizarding world and now he was on the lookout for one that had been smudged on a very special letter’s right foot. The letter had been written in French and he didn’t know how to read it but that didn’t stop him from inspecting different symbols that different circles around the world used.

Clouds were visible from the private ward room’s window. There was a slew of books and notes on his bedside table and two different chairs held binders. Quinn had gone to the fifth floor to eat and had left Harry on his own.

 _´It can be new…,´_ Harry thought and put up his index finger in front of his lips. The beard felt like a rough veil against his fingers.

The door to his room opened. Harry received five different people, three women and two men. Four of them were wearing a long leather jackets and one of the females had a voluminous bomber jacket. The feet of chairs scratched the floor when the group of five settled around the bed. One of the women had a paper bag with her from which she took brown bakes that smelled deliciously greasy, and brought them to her mouth every now and then. Harry felt a bit of shame due to his simple clothing. He had yet to get used to remote work.

“Well, how does the team fare without me?” Harry asked and took a sip from his tea cup.

”Fairly well. We figured out a name. It’s mentioned in two different letters and when we went around to ask, no one wanted to answer. It’s a sign,” one of the men said. One woman slapped another man slightly on the back and whispered something to him. Harry didn’t remember all the names of the Aurors. He didn’t find the meaning of the symbol.

The Aurors following the happenings in Europe had brought him news. Curious, he listened to people’s deductions and especially one newcomer who claimed to know more about the matter through their own scouts. When middle-aged and greying Quinn turned up in his dark attire, the ring had tightened into a scrum around Harry. Harry had to finally dig himself out from his duvets and he got dressed in a saw-toothed cardigan. He cleaned up the papers and symbols which had mounted on the bed and stacked the binders back onto free chairs.

“So his name’s Bastian,” Harry blurted out and gazed at the copy of the French letter. This unknown man hadn’t intervened in British business at all as of yet but one of the wizards who had robbed a train last month had been a citizen of Scotland. They were all linked by one name amongst symbols, terrorism and dread.

“So long as he doesn’t come to visit us,” the bomber jacket woman snorted and Harry agreed.

* * *

Ginny’s happiness experimented with its careful bounds on that budding winter, when Harry was discharged. He could breathe properly and had even played soccer with Lily. There was to be a party at the Burrow for the sake of Harry’s recovery and on the twentieth of November, there was overcrowding at the Burrow when both of their families, Weasleys and Potters, besieged Harry and the others who were privier to the incident. Eventually Ginny managed to, nevertheless, create Harry peace and both of them fled from the garden party and effervescent fat cauldrons into the Burrow.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Ginny said, frowning and chin waggling, side by side with Harry and smoothing his back with her long nails.

“I’m here, I won’t leave. These things happen,” Harry whispered and gave a gentle kiss to the top of Ginny’s head. They embraced each other for a while until Lily ran from the upstairs to downstairs, realized her mistake too late, and stayed to stare at her parents. There was not a tint of shame in Ginny’s eyes when she heard Lily’s arrival and quit the warmth of the hug.

“Shouldn’t you be in the garden? They’re making doughnuts and the table’s already been made,” Ginny said and crouched. She gestured for Lily to step forward so that she could hug her but Lily stopped by her only speedily and then escaped into the yard through the kitchen door.

“Let’s go eat some duck,” Harry said and slid his hand down onto Ginny’s shoulder. “You’ve had it rough during these months.”

“I’ve heard all kinds of things. I’m so glad they let me visit you so often. I needed it.” Ginny furrowed and thought about the things that had happened during these past couple of months. She had even prayed secretly a couple of weeks before.

Harry and Ginny both went out into the garden when the skies lit up from fireworks. The smell of roasted duck, mutton pies, lamb, different pasties and desert kisel and cauliflower foods was in the nascent evening air and people went to collect food arbitrarily as if they had been in a buffet. A dull sounding Weasley cousin was giving a speech near the table and a group of listeners had flocked to him.

“It’s nice to celebrate something sometimes.” Harry’s arm had intertwined around Ginny’s waist and he was eyeing the foods on display but also Molly, who was offering everyone lemon juice out of a large pitcher. There was no sign of alcohol. 

The children giggled and then there was groaning. Percy went to surreptitiously see what they were doing on the spot at the same time as people started magicking chairs out of thin air. Music sprang across the fields, grass and dried reeds, when the children played hide and seek in Molly and Arthur’s garden, especially among the high corn plants. The bustle of the party was contagious and Luna and her husband came to enjoy the banquet later, when it was already night and most of the food had been eaten. Ginny’s sun-tanned face widened into a smile and Harry kissed her cheek when Arthur told them something about Muggles. His hobbies centered around Muggles had taken twists and turns in the recent years and more paraphernalia filled the Weasley’s shed.

The food was enough for the whole crowd and afterwards they started exchanging rumours and talking. The children didn’t follow this conversation at all. A picture was taken of Harry with the other adults and at one o’clock in the morning, Ginny helped her mother to clean up the remains of the gathering. Papers and plastic wrappings disappeared from the ground, the plates were stacked neatly in pretty towers and taken inside, glasses tinkled and the kitchen was filled with a jingle from knives, spoons and forks. Molly swung her wand once and the dish brush and dishwashing liquid started washing the dishes. The wash basin was filled with brown water that got exchanged with clean water every now and then. Ginny sat in the living room arm chair and tapped her forehead with her fingers.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked from the other side of the room.

“I want to go home,” Ginny answered and jumped out of the chair. “We’re going home now. I need to write to Albus and James.”

Harry laughed and felt warmth in his chest and butterflies in his stomach. He too, was very happy. “Did you lose much sleep thanks to me?”

”You would have too,” Ginny snapped and walked over to the fireplace. Harry joined her company after saying his goodbyes to the matron of the party, Molly. They had to wake Lily upstairs so that she could come home after a long while.

“London, -” they both shouted an address in the fireplace and disappeared in green flames with Lily. This happened in good heart and Ginny thought that an accident like this wouldn’t grace them for years to come.

* * *

_Dear Albus,_

_Share this information with James too. I know you two study with Rose often over there. Dad has been discharged and no lasting damage was done. He’s altogether fine and can even kick a ball with Lily. I want you two to focus on homework and everything to do with studying in the castle and not to worry about us. I know these have been trying times for us all but try to wait till the Christmas holidays. We will share everything with you then. We will celebrate Lily’s birthday in the next year already, but you can’t participate then. You have school then and so does James_ _. I’d like to send you cake over there but I doubt it’ll survive in one piece the owl post travel._

_I heard you almost got yourself into detention, Albus? Don’t quarrel with others. Dad and I don’t like that._

_If you want to purchase a gift for Lily, it’s better you give it to us during the Christmas holidays. Of course, you could wrap it yourself and send it off from Hogwarts but the surest way she’ll get it is through us. We will celebrate at home when the family’s together again. Best regards to James and Rose as well (tell them I said so)._

_XXX, your mother (Ginny)_

Ginny’s letter was left unfurled on Albus’ bedside table in the Slytherin dormitory, when all slept soundly before the Christmas that was celebrated at the Potters.

Albus didn’t’ tell what present he had gotten his sister but he didn’t send his gift onwards through owl mail like he had first thought. He kept it in his pocket and wrapped it only on the twenty-second day for Lily. Rose gave all of her friends and relatives candy, James on the other hand distributed cards that exploded within five minutes. Albus gave few acquaintances presents.

* * *

On that Christmas, they spent a happy holiday celebration amongst the Potter family members in their two-story London apartment. The day started with sleet and there was no snow during that week. The sky blushed from the coldness and the temperature sank below the appropriate according to James and Albus, who had never much liked snow and chill. Words of mouth about Harry, which had been circling around, had made the boys worried but it weas clear that there was nothing to worry about immediately after they had gotten home. Albus still felt a gnawing sensation whenever Harry took everything easy and didn’t dare to run. Every time such an incident occurred, he felt a grasp in his abdomen.

´ _He’s focusing on breathing,_ ´ Albus remarked when he was eating at the Potters’ oozing dinner table. James and Harry burst into laughter and Albus ducked his head lower. He rolled his toes, barefooted, and noted how Ginny tried to pay attention to everyone on the dinner table. He took note of the smallest gestures at the table all the time. Ginny behaved like a hawk near Harry, ready to help her husband even in the tiniest and inconsequential pursuits. Some family members were forgotten in that situation.

”Do you want some turkey?” Lily asked quietly and was reaching to give Albus a piece.

“What? Yes.” Albus startled and tried to lead his mind away from its attic tier and back to the table.

There was a sense of respect for Lily awakening in him: she had had to live a double life at the Burrow and in their London apartment for months. At least James and he had Hogwarts. Lily had just Hugo and Molly and Ginny, whenever she wasn’t taking care of Harry.

* * *

Lily’s cake had three layers and it had been baked at their home. The cake bases were about two centimeters thick and they had been wet with orange juice. After this, they had applied sliced kiwi and strawberries between the bases. On these they had put whipped cream and Ginny had squeezed the cake’s decorations, creamy swirls, and split berries on top, on that morning, when they celebrated Lily’s birthday. It was the twelfth of January.

The birthday heroine herself was fitting clothes upstairs in her own room. Lily’s room packed one bed, a bedside table next to it, a big wardrobe, a desk that had a mirror for makeup and a pink rag rug. In her room, on the left wall, was a big window from which you could see onto a street of London, and on both sides of it there were golden curtains, in which there moved drawn unicorns. Outside, on the roadside, were a few cars parked and the sky had sprinkled snow onto the trees on that night. Ity would have been the perfect weather for ice-skating.

Lily adjusted a pearl necklace onto her neck and shoulder and she fluffed her skirt. She wiped her nose onto the back of her hand and whirled around once in front of the make-up mirror. ´ _Looks good,_ ´ she established and a small smile lit up her face. On the floor there lied used linens next to the made-up bed. Lily picked them up quickly and visited the bathroom shortly to throw the linens into the laundry basket.

On arrival to downstairs, she was almost driven back to upstairs. The clock was 8:15 AM and Harry swished his wand to get the last birthday decors back into their place before the guests arrived.

Lily squeezed the hem of her dress and tried to not smile, but her mouth took the shape of an ambiguous line due to that. ´ _Looks really good,_ ´ she thought and felt her cheeks blush.

Harry had dressed for the occasion and fixed his necktie when he got the last of the balloons in place. Ginny was wearing a skirt and an ordinary shirt that had a little stain on its bosom. Then the doorbell rang once and Ginny went to receive the first children.

“Okay, we’re ready,” Harry said and hooked his wand into its holster around his arm, underneath his shirt. He put his hand on his hips. “Where are the presents- Lily, you look beautiful!”

“Thank you,” Lily smiled and leaned forward a bit to see how the kitchen truly looked.

“Happy birthday, Lily,” about a ten-year-old girl said and came to wonder at the kitchen decorations with her. She was carrying a gift wrapped in a vibrant wrapping, on which there stood an elaborate bow. As the girl was laying her present among the pile of other presents next to the living room couch, Lily radiated pride and patted her father in the back.

“Good job.”

“Thank you,” Harry answered. “We’ll wait for the others to arrive, no? I’ll put the TV on.”

On the kitchen table there were birthday cards dedicated to her from their every relative. Soon children’s program started blaring in the background and both Lily and her guest, Amelia, watched the TV as they chatted quietly.

One by one, the guests came to wish Lily a good party and the house was filled with frolicking. Everyone was cut a piece of the cake and everyone got to participate in the fishing competition, where they fished for pouches that contained and sweets and tiny things. At least five children, all Muggles, sat on the living room couch during the karaoke competition. Every time someone complimented the cake or the decorations, Lily was filled with pride and joy. Nevertheless, she lost the karaoke competition. Hugo came only later that night when all the others had already left. He had a cold and he came with Molly. Hugo was given the last piece of cake and he was eating it at the same time as the Potters were having their dinner.

”Will you be better by tomorrow?” Lily asked and eyed her cousin. Hugo was sipping warm blackcurrant tea that had been added a tidy dose of the apothecary’s cough syrup.

“How should I know,” he snapped and pursed his lips. “Don’t visit or you’ll catch this as well.”

”Well I won’t come then,” Lily sniffed but felt her good mood step aside a bit due to his cold. Lily escorted Hugo out of their home and left to stare after him from a window.

She hadn’t opened all the presents with the guests there. Stomach full of evening snack, ceiling full of streamers and balloons, Lily started opening her presents. First, she got knitted red woolen socks that featured a handsome white cat. From her father she got a drawing pad and pastel chalks. Ginny had gotten her _Wizardry Fashion Across the Ages_ book and from Hugo, Lily got self-made candy.

But there was one packet still left. Without any names on who it was sent to and without a sender. Lily turned the package around in her hands. There was something soft inside and she frowned in astonished.

“Who is it from?” Ginny asked as she was watching the evening news.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t say anything.”

Soon a small finger with a nail got under the sticky tape. Lily ripped it off and simultaneously ripped the paper away. There was Muggle bubble wrap under it.

”Did someone give you two presents,” Ginny laughed and saw how Lily sought out more sticky tape from this new shell. No answer.

“I can’t open this,” Lily complained and gave the package to Ginny. Ginny didn’t have long nails but she drew out her wand for a moment from her skirt pocket. Soon the package opened and Ginny was left with an open mouth.

“How beautiful…where did they get this?”

There was no name on the package. The thing it contained didn’t have a name. There were no letters carved onto it. Only its outermost ring had lines engraved on it, like in a ruler, and this ring circled another, smaller ring. In the middle of this all was a glass ball protecting an even smaller ball that had golden and dark blue and black waves on its surface. The whole gadget shone like a star.

“Did this come from a Muggle?” Ginny gasped and looked worried. “Did someone commission a jewel for you? This has gold!”

Lily’s mouth was open and she took the jewel from her mother. She put it carefully around her neck and went to show it to her father.

“How nice,” Harry said and lowered a phone down from his ear.

Lily took the bauble off only when she went to shower later that night. She placed it carefully on the towels in the bathroom and put it on the moment she got out of shower. Tomorrow she’d write all her Muggle friends letters and would ask who had sent it.

On that night, when she chose her nightdress, she didn’t know where she would wake up the next morning. The ornament didn’t look anything but beautiful. Lily pondered whether she should have it on for the night or if she would lay it on her bedside table. While in bed, she lifted it up from its golden chain and saw it revolve attached to its cordon. London street light lit the room in a mellow light and the striped ball of the gadget protected by the glass ball shined beautifully in the dark. Lily went to sleep with this thing grabbed tightly in her fist.

When Harry came to wake Lily up to eat the next morning, there was a sliver of astonishment in his eyes, when the morning sun shed light on an empty bed.

His daughter disappeared without a trace on that winter.


	2. Left Behind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please visit Kakimora (https://snake-queen7.tumblr.com/) to commission her.  
> This chapter has also been beta-read.

Lily grabbed her birthday gift when a group of women passed by her in the street. The first woman had donned somewhat old-styled clothes. Lily dodged them by going behind the street’s trash bin and waited, as the murmurs died out and she no longer saw the glimmers from the embroidered silver moons on their robes. The woman that Lily had stared the most had walked right in front of the column and she had fixed the posture of her wide brimmed hat as the other women amused her. For a short while, they had been followed by a man donned in filthy clothes, but, in the end, he had only wandered into one of the dingy shops in the ginnel.

Lily was wearing only her nightgown and underwear and her hair had been braided. She let her gaze wander in the corners of her surroundings, on the opened shops and nameless doors, when someone behind her let out a harsh cough. She didn’t turn around to have a look but only gazed in a yearning manner at the bustle of Diagon Alley and its eclectic folk. No one paid her any mind. In the end, she returned by her own ways to that small alleyway she had woken up in on that morning.

No one had asked anything. Some witches had snatched looks at her, some blatantly staring for a long while, but no one had offered her their hand or other help. Lily hadn’t dared to depart from her quiet alley to the commotion of the foreground that had been rather small-scale at six o’clock in the morning, when the shop keepers had only started opening their businesses and had brought notice boards and signs outside to stand on the cobbled streets.

Lily hugged herself and rubbed her arms. She was cold.

 _´Where’s father? Is Ron near?´_ She thought and, after a while, went to sit next to a number of dusty barrels that had been amassed and arrayed in the narrow ginnel. Above these, on the wall, were Wanted posters.

Lily hugged her knees. Her soles pushed themselves into the sand and grit of the alley and she smelled the aridness and mustiness. Earlier, she had almost dared to get out of Knockturn Alley but the empty streets had all looked the same then and she hadn’t seen Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes at all. As it had been, some signposts had looked older than the ones she had seen when her family had gone to get Albus his school supplies. There were no neat brass signposts that had pictures that indicated wares of the shops. No one walked around in jeans and t-shirts. There were different colored cloaks, mostly black or ones that had darker palette, embroidered capes and big hats. Lily hadn’t seen freezers, that had all their food supplied in a hygienic manner, anywhere. There were only barrels and tables that had been stacked with food and potion ingredients.

Lily sneezed.

It was good to be at the feet of the building because not many adults passed by there. She hadn’t seen a single child in Knockturn Alley after the morning crowd. She had walked past Borgin and Burkes many times, she had stopped by the rear of a tiny shop that sold hats, and she had scratched her sole against her other shin. She now knew that if you walked far enough in the street, you’d have to join persons of such a reputation, whom her father had asked her to avoid. In the north, there was also a bar, it seemed. And more grit and barrels. Some carts prevented her from going further into even smaller ginnels that lead to doors that had been dropped here and there.

Someone passed by her, carrying a barrel in a cart, and the outer coat of the wizard snapped at Lily’s foot. She was eyed for a moment but then the wizard snorted and went along his own ways.

´ _Where am I?_ ´ She asked herself and steered her gaze up to the cloudy heaven. If it started raining soon, she’d be in trouble. The thought made her grip her arms even tighter, until she was, once again, filled by the yearning to walk onwards and find something familiar. A well-known face, Ron, mother, father; someone who’d be worried about her and would look for her. Nonetheless, she stayed attached to the wall, seemingly forlorn and curling her teeth, and stared with empty eyes across her at a nameless wooden door.

There was no rain. Suddenly some people extruded into her view at the start of Knockturn Alley. A witch and her company pointed Lily out to a man that had dark clothes. It was as if they had gone to get someone to go after the girl. They talked far away from her and Lily stared at them when she had dared to walk the street again. She had planned to go to Diagon Alley in search of things or return to the Leaky Cauldron, to which she hadn’t yet traveled. The man that had been accompanied by the women started following Lily when the clock was 9:35 according to the clock store in Knockturn Alley.

“Hey, wait,” the man shouted and took a couple of long strides towards Lily, which startled her. Lily pressed her back against a wall and seemed rattled when the man raised her arm.

“I need to know if you’re lost. Where are your parents? Have you been abandoned? Why are you in your nightgown?”

Lily didn’t answer a single question but squeezed her present fast.

“You need to tell me if your parents are nearby.”

“They aren’t,” Lily managed to sputter.

“Did you run away?”

“No.”

The women at the start of Knockturn Alley murmured something amongst themselves; Lily saw it askance. They seemed interested in her and then someone skipped by them, raising the collar of their coat.

“I’m an Auror,” the man in front of her said and tried to smile tenderly. Lily’s eyes widened.

“No, you’re not.” She tried to steer her gaze elsewhere and run away but the man grabbed her by the arm. Lily froze and monitored the man with her eyes wide open, almost at the mercy of panic. “Aurors don’t dress like that,” Lily said.

The man seemed flabbergasted. “How so? Aurors don’t have a dress-code-”

“Yes, they do!”

“There haven’t been any in my years,” the man snorted. “Don’t run away. I’ll take you with me. You can’t stay here alone. I was told that you have been here for many hours already, all alone.”

“No, I haven’t. I just arrived,” She tried to lie and took a hold of her wrist. “Let go, I don’t know you! I’ll scream for help!”

“I am the help!” The man snorted but let go. Lily took to running, ushered along by the man’s single grunt. She didn’t have shoes but there were no glass shards or trash even in the corners of Knockturn Alley. Lily heard the sound of large boots behind her when they thudded against the ground one after the other, and she knew that, soon, she’d be caught. The man had a brown beard and grey eyes and he didn’t make Lily feel safe. Panting, she noticed the alley had been shut from the other end so the girl jumped on a house’s roof but before she managed to scrape an escape, she felt her feet snap together and Lily came down with a rumble onto the ground of Knockturn Alley. In that dispute, she hit her nose and bumped both of her knees and became winded.

“You’re coming with me,” the Auror panted and picked her from the ground onto his shoulder.

* * *

“Triwizard tournament?” Lily faltered when the woman in front of her brewed tea. A container full of biscuits had been laid in front of her and a woolly blanket had been put around her.

“Yes. Today’s the 28th of May, 1995. There’s a tri- pardon, _four_ wizard tournament,” the woman gave a laugh and came to sit across from Lily. “I need to find out what happened to your parents. We have yet to receive a report of your disappearance but luckily an Auror found you before certain other people…it’s dangerous to pace the outdoors so alone. Anything can happen to a little girl, especially in Knockturn Alley.”

Steam rose from the teapot and the pot moved fluidly next to them, pouring each a cup of warm tea. From the smell, it wasn’t Earl Grey. Lily didn’t feel like drinking anything at all. She looked shocked and ill.

“I’ve time-travelled!” Lily exclaimed but the woman who was wearing a grey cloak and a dark suit just frowned and leaned her quill against her upper lip. She changed her posture and was now leaning against her right palm and reclined in her stately armchair.

“You can’t have time-travelled. The ministry will make a report of this but according to my memory, there’s not a single time-travelling device lost. You see, we keep accounts of them every now then and we don’t borrow them out like that anymore. A person of your age can’t have managed to get their hands on such equipment. Are you still at school?”

“I’m ten,” Lily said and had an idea to show her gift to this woman that was in front of her in this very official looking room. The room was square shaped and there weren’t any windows. It was very clean and Lily saw a couple of photographs on the woman’s great desk. They probably portrayed her family members.

They had come to the ministry from Leaky Cauldron’s fire. Lily had never been to the ministry so all that formality and dark surfaces had dazzled her. They had been stared at for a bit. Lily had raised her gaze up to the starry roof and had thought that maybe she wouldn’t have to spend her day out fleeing from rain. She had walked obediently next to the Auror that had caught her and the man hadn’t let her out of his sight. There had been a lot of people when they had taken an elevator to the second floor, where her father was supposed to work at.

“Can you tell me a bit about your parents? You remember where you live, right? A ministry worker can escort you home safely and quickly as long as we figure out how you ended up in Knockturn Alley.”

“Well…,” Lily hadn’t dared to utter anything about her parents. “I’ve time-travelled. I don’t come from here, I know no one.” She took off her pendant. “I was wearing this when I went to bed.”

The woman took the pendant and turned it around in her hands and Lily was overcome with fright. What would she do if she didn’t make it home? Had their home even been built yet? Where would she go if her parents wouldn’t take her? Where _were_ her parents? Where was anyone? Lily didn’t remember any exact years because she’d never been interested in history, but she had heard of time-travel. A terrible home-sickness and fear about her present filled her. She had informed an adult of her situation. She hadn’t been kidnapped. She was in the right place with no one to trust.

“I can send this to be looked into. You most likely won’t get it back for a long time. This was a birthday present, wasn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“You’ll get it back.” The woman put the pendant on her desk and reclined in her chair. She connected the top of her fingers together in front of her and stared at Lily for a long while.

“How long have you been missing? Do you remember at all how it happened?”

“I went to sleep with that around my neck and after that, I woke up early from the cold in that alley where I was found. I don’t know how much time has passed.”

“And nothing happened?” The woman seemed to ponder the happenings, frowning.

“Not that I know of…,” Lily’s sentence was left unfinished, when she too started thinking about the situation. Could she tell them where she lived? What if she was being looked for? The woman seemed to think along the same lines when she finally blurted out: “If you remember your address, I’ll have an Auror escort you home.”

And so they did. Lily was transfigured shoes and a new set of clothing (pants and a shirt) and she left the ministry back into the stir of London. Glimmering cloaks and old-fashioned embroidered dresses turned into Muggle couture, the cobbled streets were replaced with asphalt and galleons were exchanged to pounds. Lily lurched along with the man, attached to his grip, and didn’t seem to grasp things at all. They were pushed around in the underground and there was always a slew of Muggles at their heels and most didn’t pay them any mind. Auror, Alan Dunphy, didn’t converse with anyone and you got an idling impression from him. Lily bit her lip and had a firm grip on him in the underground

Soon they were near a part of London recognisable to her. She stepped into the house’s yard and walked all the way to the front door, but the man knocked the door in her stead.

The door was opened by, presumably, a Muggle. Darkly donned Alan glanced at Lily’s expression when she finally got presented with the truth that she wouldn’t return home and that she had more than likely time-travelled. Lily’s chin waggled and she tried to peek behind the woman only to notice the interior was entirely different from her home.

“How can I help?” The old woman asked. Behind her, down the stairs, went an older boy who just glanced at them and swept into, what Lily remembered to be, the kitchen. Alan Dunphy grunted once and put his hand down on her shoulder.

“You live here, right?” The Auror commented this sentence quietly, as if to pay respects to the girl’s apparent distraught.

“No…no, I don’t. This was a mistake,” Lily said quickly and turned around. “That’s not my mother.”

The woman looked surprised. “I have never even seen you before. Is the girl lost?”

“We’ll return to the police station, then.” The Auror’s voice was gruff and he turned around to take Lily by the hand. “Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

“It’s nothing,” was heard after them when the door panged shut and Lily had already been led onto the sidewalk. Only now did the first tears come into her eyes and she squeezed the Auror’s hand.

“What do I do now,” she wept. “I don’t have a home anymore!” Knowing what happened to orphans in movies, Lily hypothesised her own fate and waited for her emotions to cool down. Wrapped in her own thoughts, Lily didn’t pay any mind to the awkward posture of the man when he scratched his beard.

“You have a home. I think your memory might be faulty here. I think it happened when you, probably, accidentally Apparated in your sleep. It seldom happens but it’s not like I haven’t heard of it.” He ended his sentence and glanced at the other houses of the block. “We’re definitely heading to St Mungo’s now. I think you might have heard of the place - you’ll be examined there.”

“St Mungo’s?!” Lily cried out. “But I haven’t been hurt!”

“Your memories will be examined there. I’ll be with you throughout the process,” the Auror impressed and started leading them on. Lily tried to listen to his words with care but soon shrugged, agitated, and said in a more empathetical manner than she had intended: “There’s nothing wrong with my memory.”

“We’ll still go and examine you.”

* * *

St Mungo’s hospital had apparently been renovated sometime in the future. Now it somehow looked traditional with its worn chairs and non-marble floors, and Lily had never seen the crystal balls that stood out in the ceiling of the reception hall. In her time, the ceiling had been charmed to be fluorescent (at night time the light was yellowish) and repeat astronomical signs. They zigzagged past others and finally ended up in the last spot of the queue leading to the reception desk. They waited until they were the ones in front.

A blonde woman smiled at them and reclined against the desk, giving them advice.

“It’s either the second or the fourth floor,” the woman answered, when she had been filled in on the details. However, neither of them mentioned anything of time-travel to her. Every time Lily tried to open her mouth, she succumbed to resignation’s side and remembered what a different woman had said to her in the ministry in that morning.

 _`This is time-travel,´_ Lily thought and squeezed her hands into fists. She had received enough evidence and so would the others when they’d see her memory! Lily didn’t partake in the adults’ conversation, which, to her, seemed incomprehensible (she was so angry) and instead stared intensively at the line between the floor and the desk. All of this had effaced her nascent doubts but she no longer knew if she could blame the pendant that she had gotten as a gift. Time-travel had never been mentioned to her, she had just learned of the concept from movies.

Lily’s braided hair swung from one side to the other when she was finally escorted to the fourth floor. There, she was met with an old man that had green clothes and a monocle in his other eye.

“Let’s check you then,” the man said as a start and Lily had to step away from the Auror’s shadow and into the light of the hospital. She was poked, turned and was made to walk in a line. She experienced the other’s wand thoroughly and every time it felt like she had surpassed some protection. Lily had visited St Mungo’s a lot during the past few months but she had never been taken there to be experimented on.

Three empty vials were on the healer’s desk with three much smaller glassware that had been added stoppers. For Lily, he had reserved two that contained some liquid that tasted like lime. Alan Dunphy waited indifferently on a stool and let the healer finish all of his examinations. He was given a change to get out of the room but decided to stay. Lily didn’t know what to think of the man.

“You’re alright,” the healer said finally. “Do you yourself notice that your memory is bad?”

“No,” Lily said in a straight manner and rubbed her other arm. “May I get a coat? I’m cold.”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any spare coats.” The healer stroked his own chin and sat in his own chair that was of much higher quality than Dunphy’s stool and the chairs in the reception hall. “I haven’t found any evidence to suggest a mutilated memory, amnesia, corrosion in the brain or anything else for that matter. The girl is entirely healthy in my book. She hasn’t been jinxed or charmed in any way. Even her vaccinations seem to be in order.” The healer went through a stack of papers on his clipboard and summoned another healer into his room.

“You said the girl doesn’t remember anymore where she lives?”

“Yes. We were on the spot but no one recognised her.”

Lily squeezed her hand into a fist harder, mouth pursed and steered a passionate gaze towards the Auror. Red spread to her ears and she couldn’t make heads or tails of her weaving thoughts.

“Well in that case, I’ll make an appointment with a specialist. We’ll go through some of her memories. Has no one filed a missing person report yet?”

“Wait a minute, will you go through all my memories?” Lily cried and looked shocked. She had hit James during the Christmas holiday and had stashed money away from her parents.

The healer laughed. “No, we won’t, we certainly won’t. Our specialist will only look at the ones which will tell us your parents. We won’t find out anything else. It’s also our way of finding out if there’s something wrong with your memory. The last examination, so to say.”

They changed rooms but stayed on the fourth floor. Lily was first ushered into a dark room, which was lit, as if bathing in fluorescent light, in green shimmer, when the healer touched an ornate engraved tile in the wall. There were many sinks in the room, no windows and there was one chair standing on the floor, around which there had been drawn many different patterns. Lily thought she saw burned runes on the floor.

“Would you sit in that chair there? We’ll start after fifteen minutes.” The other healer led them into the room but Dunphy grabbed Lily by the shoulder again and made her turn around.

“I can’t be here when they look through your memory. I’ll wait for you outside. I’ll be informed of your parents so that we can look for them or at least know their faces.”

“What do you mean _at least_? Don’t I get to go home immediately?” Lily said suddenly in an uneven voice.

“You probably don’t. We’re still waiting for a missing person report. You’ll quite possibly have to spend this night in a ministry sponsored children’s house. I can’t keep you with me all the time.”

“Do I have to go to an orphanage?!” Lily cried and seemed terrified.

“An orphanage is a bit…,” the man grunted and frowned. “Think of it as a vacation. You’ll have a roof over your head and scheduled mealtimes. Just like in a summer camp, or not?”

Lily stared at him a bit abashed but also very offended. In the end, the Auror’s clothes rustled when he exited the room and closed the door after himself. Lily went to sit in the chair in the middle of the room.

“Your memory has probably never been searched before, am I right?” The healer, who had brown hair, grey eyes and was very young, said and flashed Lily a smile. She was near one of the sinks and was measuring a potion into four different vials. “I must say this upfront: we won’t tell the contents of your memories to anyone but the authorities. We can’t share what we see with others and we won’t take memories from you for safekeeping. We’ll just test your memory and see who your parents are and where you live.”

“Hmm,” Lily sighed and crossed her hands in her lap. Heart quivering, she first stared at her feet and then to the opening front door from which four new healers stepped in.

“Let’s start,” Nathan Newman, according to his name tag, said and took out his wand.

* * *

Alan Dunphy was summoned to be heard after half an hour. He was received by four extremely solemn faces and a worried girl in her chair. The healer that had led them to the room had taken support from the rim of the sink and there was a broken vial on the ground.

“I must deliver this girl to the Aurors,” Milan Howard, a stout man with a moustache, said amongst everything else happening. “She has clearly time-travelled. She comes from the future. Her father is Harry Potter.”

Alan Dunphy’s agenda got rearranged for that day after he heard this.

* * *

Harry Potter wasn’t written a magical letter about the proceedings. Albus Dumbledore wasn’t notified that a child of his student had arrived from the future. No one at Hogwarts knew about what had happened. The ministry kept the case strictly in its own juridical department and in their control and one of the first things they did was change Lily’s name officially. This was done so that there wouldn’t an utterance of Lily Potter in the ministry’s register before her birth and, of course, the Unspeakables took the case. Aurors weren’t at the top of their game in time-travel business so Lily’s pendant got ever more famous and they started examining it with ardour. Someone had come twenty-two years from the future and this was a heavy burden to bear. Up till now, people had only gone to the past so this was the first time when someone had come into their time from the future.

“I don’t understand this,” an Unspeakable said to her co-worker in the furthest corners of their halls. “Should I bang this before it starts working?”

She was speaking of the time-travelling device that, in their eyes, was the future variant of their still undeveloped versions of time-turners.

There were no time-lines in the thing, no minutes, no seconds and no sand. They didn’t understand where it drew its strength from, only that it had been engraved from gold-alloy but its curves and dips didn’t overarch from their wands or by being dropped on the floor. The thing didn’t change into anything at all and it couldn’t be dismantled into pieces. They didn’t find any joints in it so the only way it could have been made was by goblins (they could have wrought the golden skeleton without any apparent joints) or by magic.

But a Muggle certainly couldn’t have given it to Lily. Of that, they all agreed on, when the analyse from the usage of magic had finished and they had affirmed in just under a week that the object was of magical origin.

The girl hadn’t been born yet. Wouldn’t be for years to come. So she was given, for precisely this reason, a guardian, and when the sun set on that day and the horizon was coloured crimson, every one of the fifty Unspeakables had arrived to the conclusion that they couldn’t completely remove the possibility of an attack to the Potter household, when everyone had been asleep.

To be sure, not a single word of this was told to Lily.

* * *

Lily and her guardian got to live in a small apartment, in London, close by the ministry. It was a one-bedroom apartment (Lily ended up taking the bedroom) with one living room that had all the kitchen appliances crammed in there. The bathroom was clean and the interior had many grey surfaces. There was also a shower cubicle there. Her guardian slept in the kitchen slash living room area in a magical portable bed that also turned into a suitcase when it wasn’t needed. They had a simple table and two chairs and grey curtains. The apartment had recently been aired so there was a fresh smell in the air.

“You get to live here with your guardian until this debacle has been solved. Try not to mention your real name anywhere even by accident. Harry Potter is famous so you mustn’t use your surname at any cost. There are other Potters, of course, but it’d rouse too many questions and we don’t want everyone knowledgeable about the happenings. You must know, rumours carry might,” the Auror coughed and put his hands behind his back. “You will be protected. You will get one Auror to take care of your business.”

“Understood,” Madeline Robertson, Lily’s guardian and connoisseur of the wizarding law, said and fixed her glasses’ position while holding a stack of bed-sheets in her other hand. Sitting on a chair with her feet folded in front of her, Lily, momentarily, steered her attention from _Which Broomstick_ into the two adults but then hid her gaze behind the pages of the publication. It didn’t pay any the hardship to comment anything now and she’d get off easier if she was only quiet.

“You have been told what the future holds if we cannot make corrections to the matter. Share this information with your ward when you’re able.”

“I understand,” Robertson commented and the adults bid each other farewell. Before that they exchanged a couple of words about changes in shifts. In Lily’s understanding, this had more to do with the Auror’s work.

This wasn’t the first time when she had been hired a bodyguard. Lily remembered, when she had been about six years old, and there had been a dangerous escaped convict on the loose from Azkaban, who had threatened their family a lot. Then their father had hired each of them a bodyguard. Lily had been with hers for months at their home before the convict had been caught and he had been shipped back to the prison.

“Well, now we’re alone,” Robertson acknowledged and started changing the sheets to her own bed. She was soon ready and sat on the small room’s other chair across from Lily.

“We need to talk. You must obey me during these months. Everyone wishes to have you returned into your own time, to your parents.”

“Of course,” Lily said and laid the magazine on the table. Her nightgown had been folded on the backrest of her chair and she hugged her knees.

“It means that you can’t seek out your parents or write them letters. According to our courier, Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter aren’t even dating yet so hastening things would surely lead to complications. In other words, if you yourself won’t go there to prove your case, and we won’t let you do that, no one will believe you. This is what it means to protect time.”

“Will my parents know where I’ve been?”

“Quite possibly. When your equipment has been fixed, or another method has been discovered, we aim to give you enough papers to take with you to prove this debacle happened and this will have an entry in the ministry’s books.” The woman stopped and whisked out her wand. She waved it once and a teapot, an aluminium tea box and a tea strainer pushed themselves into view.

“Do you drink coffee or tea?” Lily was asked promptly.

“Tea, thank you,” she answered. Lily had disentangled her braid and her red curls, that shined in the evening sun, fell beautifully down against her back.

“I am prepared to live here for months if need be. We have our own shampoos and other hygienic products. Have you ever been on period yet?”

“What’s that?”

“No then. Would you like to hear what it is?” The woman stared at her enquiringly.

“Not now.” Lily watched as the teapot was filled with tap water and how a couple of tea spoons of tea leaves went into the tea strainer. “What tea do we have?”

“English breakfast. It’s good for your limbs especially after you’ve been out in the cold long today and all of this must have come as a shock to you. I, myself, don’t know how long we have to live like this.” The woman apologised again and Lily heard how the water in the teapot started warming on the stove.

“We will avoid wizarding Britain in London but if a need arises and we need to visit, as an example, Diagon Alley, I will escort you there. The ministry is especially concerned over you Hogwarts letter; we don’t know if you will even get it or if you’re able to start your studies. We will try to navigate the situation somehow, but in all likeness, a member of the board of governors of Hogwarts will come visit you sometime. We shall worry about that more next year if you’re still here.” The woman stared at her straight in the eyes and crossed her hands on the table. “I also have a request. Try not to tell me what happens in the future. No ministry worker, an ordinary wizard or a witch, or your future parents may know what happens in the future. Your memories will be protected and at the same time this is the ministry’s way of protecting wizarding Britain. No chaos is permitted and you may not be alone during this process.”

“…I understand,” Lily nodded and noticed how the body language of the woman signed irritableness. It was as if she wanted to speak more but controlled herself.

The teapot on the stove steamed again and Lily’s “nurse” went to appreciate the tea’s aromas. “This is good. We shall partake in drinking.”

“Thank you.” Lily took an offered cup and had to soon lower it on the table due to its hot ceramic surface. English Breakfast’s ornate red tea box was the only thing next to the stove and Robertson started reading Daily Prophet that she had brought with her. It was already late and the evening sun made its descent between London roofs and lit them with its glowing red shimmer.

On that night, Lily brushed her teeth alone in their small grey bathroom and stared at her reflection all the while being bored. The day’s happenings had yet to form a coherent picture in her mind. It felt as if she had been in Knockturn Alley only a couple of hours ago. She rinsed her mouth multiple times and donned her washed nightgown before the mirror, exiting the bathroom, she saw how Madeline Robertson was already asleep. Lily took their teacups off from the table (Robertson’s cup was half full) and put them in the dishwasher. Robertson’s small snorts here and there didn’t bother Lily. She went to her own room around eleven o’clock (later than she usually stayed up for) and shut the door gently after her.

It was her first night at another place than the Burrow or her home, the Potter residence. She wasn’t knowledgeable of this part of London at all and when she clambered into her bed, under its white blanket and put her head on a white pillow, she felt lost.

No plushies.

No colours.

Only tea and biscuits. And a guardian.

On that night, she cried herself to sleep and got a headache.


	3. Hope

Last summer, they had struck her father like arrows and had attacked against his flesh and blood. One after the other, they had abused that body, which was dear to Lily, and which had been transported to a hospital in hurry, in critical condition.

Harry could have died on that day, in that summer, during that raid. Afterwards, he didn’t breathe properly for a long time and Lily kicked a ball by herself to a self-made, rickety, goal many times in the Burrow’s yard. She once saw Ginny rush out from the Burrow’s door, straight to Lily, past the geese and hens. From that yard she had been picked up and delivered to a hospital, because no one else from their family, counting her brothers, could make it. Ginny had been pale as a sheet and had only sat in a metallic hospital chair; she had stared in front of her and had crossed her hands in front of her mouth, when Lily had played in the children’s corner with toys that were for people younger than her.

Harry had been with Healers for a long time. Loud speech had been heard from the room occasionally and it had made Lily’s and Ginny’s gazes meet. All in all, the waiting had taken them a couple of hours and Lily had begun to feel hungry. Then, during the evening, the situation had already been in control. Ginny had gone into the room without Lily and you couldn’t hear any small talk from there so Lily had thought that her father had been asleep.

Ginny had gone to get her later. Lily had gone to see the man in the bed and had noted his sleep and red chest and throat. There had been a bubble attached to Harry’s face and two infusion tubes had been attached to his arms. The other infusion contained some yellowish liquid and the other infusion was colorless. The entire hospital room had been rather bland and colorless.

“Let’s go home,” Ginny had said and had taken Lily away from Harry’s room.

It was the second time Lily felt hatred for the practitioners of the Dark Arts.

* * *

A month had already passed from her advent and today was the 24th day of June. Lily basked in the sunlight in its shred that reflected from their kitchen’s window as one thick line onto the table, on the chair she was sitting on and on the wall. As per usual, they had their old-fashioned radio on and their morning tea floated lukewarm in their cups on the table. Robertson was reading a book on her bed and on the draining board, on a towel, was a pan drying with two plates with their forks and knives.

“Could we go out for a walk a bit later?” Lily asked and changed her posture at the same time. The day’s Daily Prophet, delivered at six in the morning, rested folded next to their cups.

“We can a bit later. I’ll take you to Diagon Alley to celebrate the end of the Triwizard Tournament. It should end today.”

“I’ll find a station,” Lily announced and started going through the radio’s stations. “Could we visit some café today as well?”

“Are you bored?” Robertson laughed and let her gaze be steered away from the pages of the book. A knock was heard from downstairs along with loud wails. Then she seemed to ponder on the issue at the same time as Lily searched for the right station. Finally, it seemed like she had found it and the station snapped on without any static.

_“-today, there will be a tough fight when our competitors head on towards the last task that will be revealed in a couple of moments. What do you think, what changes do the Durmstrang and Beauxbaton have against Hogwarts’s two very capable and good-natured combatants?”_

_“It’s difficult to say but I feel like everyone who had their doubts have already dismissed any claims about tampering-”_

_“True, true!”_

_“- and what comes to the challenge, I heard that clearing it requires both muscle and brain. Today, it’s not enough if you are well and in good state of fitness or If you have dashing marks on Charms. Now we need that little something that guarantees the challengers eternal glory and, of course, the coveted prize money.”_

_“1000 galleons! It’s a big fortune to give to a seventeen-year-old.”_

_“Aha! I knew you were supporting Beauxbaton’s Fleur Delacour! I bet on it!”_

_“Well, oh dear, I’ve been caught,”_ the sportscaster laughed and then coughed. _“But what if the dark horse of this tournament ends up snatching the trophy and the money?”_

_“Harry Potter, you say? But he’s only 14 years old! I doubt it…although, he has cleared the last two challenges fairly well.”_

_“True, true-”_

“Is Harry Potter competing?” Lily said fast and turned to Robertson who had been muttering something by herself.

“Yes, he’s competing. I’ve kept track of the Tournament from its early stages. Those two are good sportscasters.” Robertson bit her lip and put a bookmark, that had a tassel attached to its other end, between the pages of the book and shut the tome. “We can visit a café, by the way. I should have just enough money for that but I feel like I won’t take you out to Diagon Alley after all.”

“Because of Harry Potter? Do I look like him?”

“You don’t look similar enough. I just thought that maybe you’ll get too excited and start getting ideas to do something.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Lily said, offended, and turned to face the radio, the sunlight shining in her hair. Applauses started resounding from the radio with loud racket from a throng.

“- _now we’ve been granted a special permission to enter Hogwarts’s stonewalls and interview a couple of students before we move onto the sponsored messages. As you can hear, there’s zesty competitive air around and the students have broken off into tiny camps according to whoever they support. It’s nice to see young wizarding folk portray such team spirit, or at least it looks like that to me, and I feel like this tournament is one of the better ideas that the Departments have come up with in a long time-”_

“ _There, there,”_ the other sportscaster chided in the background.

“Jokers,” Robertson commented and went to pour the rest of her tea down the drain. “Should we leave now or later? It’s already eleven o’clock.”

“It’s sunny outside…let’s go. So, we won’t go to Diagon Alley?” Lily asked and moved away from her chair and went into her own room. Despite the intensive heating, it was always rather cool in the apartment. Both, the compliance and the pondering of the woman had caused Lily much worry and drawbacks. Momentary bafflements had gone away during the month when they both had gotten used to each other and Robertson behaved like a true mother every once in a while. This bothered Lily, to whom the situation was still deviant, and she didn’t always accept the decorum and the care of the other. She also got offended every now and then and realized that the woman couldn’t speak otherwise than very officially or over-caringly. After Lily exited her room in full attire, Robertson had already donned her beige trench coat and was waiting by the door with an umbrella.

“I decided that we can visit Diagon Alley. We can marvel at wands again, if you want?”

“Thank you for trusting me,” Lily answered in a witty manner but the wands had cheered her up in a strange way. Lily scrabbled her hair and bailed from the apartment at the opening of a lock at the same time as the woman’s key fob glinted against it. There had been both rain and sunshine in turns in London on that day for many hours and she thought that the weather would likely continue its course till the evening.

Robertson seemed to be gathering her thoughts in regards to some matter for the entire course of their outing. This official woman and the captain of Lily’s future had a slender structure in her coat but had springy step as she walked along the streets of London. She was constantly on standby; a status that Lily had learned to take note of at their home but especially outside, when she had to walk next to her all the time. Lily sought the same. Others shouldn’t be able perceive from her form how she was always tense during their businesses outside and how she thought that one of their neighbors followed them or that some wizard had finally located their dwelling place and had come to extort them. The passage from their apartment to the nearest café didn’t take more than fifteen minutes. It seemed like the hangout to many young people and there was an assembly of older males at the corner of the café. Everyone of them was rotund at their midriff and some sported thick moustaches.

“Let’s not eat a lot, we will spare our stomachs from cramps,” Robertson said at the door when they had yet to enter the building.

“Aren’t you going to eat anything at all?”

“I am, I’m hungry too.” She was answered and Robertson opened the door to the café for Lily.

It was a Victorian café, from which ceiling there hanged iron crosses that had a round lamp on each of their corners. Its three big windows had been mounted in archs that had pillars embellishing their sides and these had decorative ends to them in the form of flowers. The counter was abound with baked rolls and cakes and bread. At its other end, in one group, were coffee-making equipment, creamers and sugar bowls. Chalkboards that had different beverages and coffee sorts written on them had been fastened onto the pillars. Drop-down cabinets were also attached to the ceiling and these had been crammed with varieties of tea and different-looking boxes. The windows visible from the outside were decorated with vintage objects and old coffee pots. Each café table had a vase with a few flowers and a jar from which napkins could be pulled. The place was very bright and warm.

Lily chose a smoked salmon croissant and orange juice. Robertson ordered a glass of red wine and some pastry. They had already eaten breakfast but Lily was already going hungry. She went to reserve a table for them while Robertson paid for their food.

Wizarding Wireless Network, WWN, didn’t blare here so Lily had no idea if the interviews were over. Whisking her legs in her chair, she corrected her beret, which Robertson had bought for her a couple of weeks earlier, and thought of what kind of challenges there were in a Triwizard Tournament. She hadn’t heard of the tournament ever – her father didn’t mention the things of his childhood readily and didn’t share his experiences just like that. So, Lily didn’t know anything about these passing years and no one, who would watch her memory, would profit from her knowledge of the future.

Robertson veered to her seat and they ate in peace.

“Are we staying for long in…um, that place?” Lily asked while eating her smoked salmon croissant.

“Do you mean the alley? Madeline took a sip from her wine glass.

“I guess so?” Lily dithered for a moment. “Wands?”

“Hush,” Robertson said quietly and drank her wine. She broke the surface of her pastry by pushing a spoon into its depths and carried its cargo into her mouth. They continued their dining in quietness. Madeline Robertson portrayed, once again, a forced indifference and Lily felt like she couldn’t speak to the other again.

Lily had made a note of the fact that someone always followed them. When they went outside, there was always some Auror in Muggle-clothing at a designated distance away from them. Some were males, others were females. Some didn’t have any affinity for following and Lily spotted them immediately, while others were very efficient in their job and Lily had seen a certain man only a couple of times and even then, by accident. They always looked like ordinary street stompers: some wore construction site clothing; others were like solitaires and others were dressed very well and used business styles to their advantage. This time, they were being followed by a man whose name had been uncovered as Arnold according to Lily’s eavesdropping.

Lily’s guardian and the Auror hadn’t exchanged one word during their outing. Robertson behaved like the man didn’t exist and even now their follower read a newspaper just outside the café.

“Emma, shall we leave?” Robertson asked when Lily had eaten her croissant and drank her juice. “We must go.”

Lily wiped her mouth clean and they started making strides towards Leaky Cauldron with the Auror at their heels. 

* * *

“Emma, we’ll get off here,” Robertson said and they clambered off the bus. Lily was pleased when she got her feet on firm ground and took a deep breath. Bus rides made her feel ill. Leaky Cauldron, for one, was full of people and the barista had put the WWN going off. Everyone was listening to the sportscaster’s rambling when she interviewed every head of their own school one by one and then in a group.

´ _Plenary session right before the task_ ,´ Lily thought and her grip of Robertson’s hand strengthened. Would anyone in the bar think of them as mother and daughter?

Robertson didn’t stand around and wait, she marched straight to the entrance of Diagon Alley and tapped the tiles rhythmically. Lily knew from experience that the Auror would wait a bit and would then come after them in compulsory essentialness. It happened so because it had been planned as such and no one would take a note of an Auror in civil attire, even though the clothes were Muggle. Last time a woman had donned a cloak in the bar and had followed them dressed in it, making a mix and match style between Muggle and Wizarding fashion. So it happened now too. Robertson had managed to take them to a bookshop, where WWN blared too, when Lily noticed the man outside the shop, looking at the paperbacks on sale. Lily went to finger the balusters of the staircase tilting upstairs and stayed firmly put.

Robertson seemed to argue tactfully with the vendor about something.

´ _I wish I could speak freely_ ,´ Lily sighed and watched the Auror nearby the door. Even the bookshop didn’t have many customers because everyone was probably doing their work. Lily’s attention was caught by the ongoing radio program at the same time as she gazed at the backs of the books.

“ _Have you heard anything about Barty Crouch?_ ” The reporter asked another sportscaster.

_“We haven’t. He seems to have disappeared into thin air and nobody knows why! We could use him as a judge especially now-”_

Lily didn’t listen to the women’s talk more than that. She didn’t know who Barty Crouch was. She didn’t know what the man’s disappearance meant.

“Emma, let’s leave!” Robertson shouted from the counter and Lily joined her company closely.

“Who’s Barty Crouch?” Lily asked as she walked behind Madeline Robertson, rubbing her hands on her pants.

“He’s a politician,” Robertson answered shortly and dug up a list from her handbag. The sky of Diagon Alley started to look grey and cloudy even though the sun gleamed into view every now and then. Soon a drizzle wet Lily’s red hair and Robertson opened her umbrella. Droplets hit against it in an increasing pace and Lily sought protection for herself from under it. She glanced behind them. Arnold followed them on the sly.

“I don’t know what he’s doing now but Crouch has been missing for a prolonged time. It’s really irresponsible of him and not at all like him…” Robertson commented suddenly and bit her lip. “I don’t personally know Barty Crouch, though.” She turned to view Lily when they walked Diagon Alley along its entire length, seeking Ollivander’s.

“Will the tournament really end today?” Lily asked along the way.

“Yes, it will.” Robertson glanced at her wristwatch. “The reporting on the last trial will start only later this evening. Would you like to stay up listening to the coverage?” She glanced in Lily’s direction.

“I’d like to,” Lily answered briskly and hurried onward. The window of Ollivander’s came into their view. “We have time, right?”

“We do…would you like to do something?”

“I’d like to go and see owls,” Lily said and stopped to marvel at the polished wands showed off in Ollivander’s window. Only one more year…

“Owls, you say…” Robertson stood next to her under the umbrella and her free hand was in the pocket of her trench coat. Robertson looked askance to see where Arnold shielded himself from the rain and listening to the heady speech coming from a café. She recognized some foreign languages from their midst and soon a small tourist group came behind them into the shop across from Ollivander’s. They talked motley French in rudimentary dialect and made authoritative hand movements. If the entire group would spread out along the entire width of the street, Diagon Alley would become a rough road and one would have to stray into other ginnels and navigate to somewhere else than Knockturn Alley by them.

´ _Knockturn Alley surrounds the entire place here and there_ ,´ Robertson thought and watched Lily’s adoration. The drizzle threatened to amass more strength into its droplet and soon they were standing in a downpour. Arnold fixed his collar and stepped more underneath the pentice where he covered from the rain. The small rivulets that had built up in Diagon Alley spread and Lily’s shoes got wet in that rain.

“Cedric Diggory is certain to win,” someone commented right behind them at the same time as they ran away from the rain with their girlfriends.

“That’s not so! I’ll bet on Krum! Let’s party, we’ll invite-,” they disappeared further. Robertson saw how two kept briefcases over their heads as if they were umbrellas. No one on Diagon Alley had a raincoat on.

“Are you ready?” Robertson finally asked Lily, who turned to face her, her mouth in a thin line.

“Can we go inside-”

“No, we can’t. Let’s go see some owls.”

“Huh…,” Lily seared the shop’s window with her stare until she turned briskly and vigorously to follow her late steps back along Diagon Alley to Eyelops Owl Emprium.

They walked a lot on that day. Diagon Alley’s bumpy paving carried on for miles and they finally stretched into ginnels and out from the main road and vendors. They also walked past a gift shop, past a fabric store and a tea shop and past all those tiny boutiques that weren’t bestowed the luck of those shops that were on the busier roads. They also hurtled into Carkitt Market; the iron wrought skeleton with its glass panels protected its shoppers from rain and everything that could fall from the sky. They kept to the edges of certain groups. In Lily’s opinion, this was done to please Arnold. Some shops projected into the streets from their downstairs and you could see into them from the varying small squares in wooden frames. Lily complied with Robertson’s takes and they didn’t spend time under the ironwork rafters of Carkitt but turned away to finally visit Gringotts. Lily followed Arnold’s doings so much that Robertson had to acknowledge her behavior. Arnold should have been a secret, not their ostensible Auror bodyguard. This hunched figure disappeared from Lily’s sight every now and then and it always spooked her out, as she didn’t trust her guard more than that.

Lily was very morose when they finally were enclosed in the marble building of Gringotts and once inside, she took off her beret. Lily’s hair had been combed smoothly backwards, away from her forehead and it had been pulled underneath the beret very carefully. Now she righted its wet locks when Robertson saw to her business at the counter. Robertson tuned into Gringott’s colours very well and she seemed to talk to the stubby goblin very well.

Gringott’s golden great clock sported from the hall’s ceiling. There were diamonds imbedded to its every hour mark and its hour and minute hands had been wrought ornate. You had to watch it from every angle, and Lily changed her position on the marble floor here and there, so that you could scope every visible detail of the clock.

”Impressed?” A goblin who was holding a pamphlet to her left asked.

“Yes!” She answered and turned to face him quickly.

“It was made in the 18th century. A true vintage clock, if you ask me. No other branch of ours has a clock like that,” the goblin sniggered.

It was quarter over two o’clock in the day. The last trial of the Triwizard tournament would begin only during the evening. Lily was still in the mood to listen to the interviews so she hoped that Robertson would conduct her business swiftly. The Auror hadn’t followed them inside Gringotts.

“I wonder if I’ll be opened an account someday,” Lily thought and chafed the floor with her shoe discreetly. She eyed the goblins that manned the front counter in front of which Madeline Robertson currently stood. Some measured gold in nuggets or bars, others counted galleons in piles; one goblin seemed to be gazing deep into a diamond with some gadget he had in his eye and another clearly handled pounds. Unnoticed, Lily saw how right in front of this goblin, there were many parchments, on which there were numbers and graphs that changed persistently. There wasn’t much movement in the grand hall anyway at this time of the day, unless you counted the goblins in.

“Emma Kaur.” It was heard from the direction of Madeline Robertson and Lily recognized her fake name. The goblin in front of Robertson didn’t even glance at her but leaned forward on the counter, as if to see Robertson better.

In that moment, the doors to Gringotts opened again and in walked a man donned entirely in black. He had a long, almost white and well-tended hair and he walked with a walking stick. The man was wearing gloves. The clothes of this man were of such quality that he definitely had money to spare. Lily was right in the middle of the hall, when this man walked past her without even looking at her. He stepped into the left corridor and soon disappeared amongst the pillars. It was a swift episode and Lily regained her bearings fast. She was left to think about the thick cape of the stranger that had decorations sewed on it and his shining boots. Soon, however, someone landed a hand on Lily’s shoulder, making her quickly turn her head.

“We’ll go home now. I managed to conduct my business,” Robertson said and started walking towards the doors. Lily followed after her with brisk steps.

“Did you open an account for me?”

“I didn’t. We can talk about that later.” The corners of Robertson’s mouth raised tenderly and she let a goblin open the door for them. Immediately after doing this, the sun blinded Lily but she spotted Arnold immediately.

“We should hurry home but let’s first do some grocery shopping. We have plenty of time before the third task is on way,” Robertson commented and took Lily’s hand.

“What are we going to eat today?” Lily asked when they descended the stairs of Gringotts.

“Something good. We can have a small party now that the Triwizard Tournament is ending. What would you like to have?” Robertson turned to face Lily. “I’ve saved money for each purchase we make so we can’t splurge unduly, unfortunately.”

“Well, in that case…” Lily mused. “Let’s eat some good salad. No pasta, we eat too much of it.”

The next turn unveiled them a cluster of steep brown roofs of crammed together houses of Diagon Alley. They were visible plumb and the sunlight created a strong contrast between the shadowy and lit places of the houses. The shadows of narrow ginnels seemed even more overcast in that shine. The doors of the shops of Diagon Alley were closed and there weren’t a lot of people on the street when they finally reached the tile wall from which you could enter Leaky Cauldron. Lily had glanced at a narrow alley that would have led to Knockturn Alley, in which she had walked about a month ago. She was happy that she hadn’t become a street rat (which would have been comparably impossible in modern day wizarding world; someone would have made a report of her to the Aurors sooner or later).

* * *

Lily and Robertson didn’t have a TV, a toaster or anything else other than a dishwasher, a stove, a washing machine and a radio. So, Robertson fried slices of bread on a pan as Lily was whisking cream and opening a jar of strawberry jam. On the work top, there stood out two large servings of shrimp salad on which there was a quarter of a lemon. Next to them was a plate full of fried light brown slices of bread. The radio blared on in the background and they listened to the sportscaster’s comments and waited for the toot, which would come in half an hour, to signal the start of the evening’s culmination. The sun had already begun to set around five o’clock and when Robertson had fried the last of the thick bread heels and Lily had whisked the cream (Robertson had had to use magic because cream was hard to whisk perfectly without a machine), they listened to the sportscaster’s tone that grew constantly more excited and soon came a notification of how the contestants had already gone to the place of the third task, next to the Quidditch stadium of Hogwarts.

_“And now, escorted by these comments, we shall move onto the last trial itself! We have surely interviewed about half of the staff here.”_

_“You said it,”_ said a female sportscaster. “ _Ludo Bagman’s comments were most enlightening.”_

You started to hear more and more of other people’s voices on the radio when the spectators filled the seats of the Quidditch stadium. The reporter explained that all four candidates would leave to navigate the labyrinth from four different spots and that the teachers would keep watch outside the stadium, following the movements of the combatants. There had been many things hidden in the maze to work as opponents to the students and you could always exit the race if you felt the task to be too much for you. It was a question of a giant steeplechase, however, so anything could happen. Bets had been made of the competing students (Cedric and Krum seemed to have picked the most popularity), and the reporters were going through this information.

“I wish we had a TV…” Lily sighed and leaned against her cheek on the table. She had moved both plates on the table.

“You wouldn’t get any picture from it. No one has invented wizarding recording equipment yet,” Robertson said at the same time as she dragged her chair backwards so she could sit on it. She put a giant jug of lemon juice on the table and threw two teaspoonfuls of clean white sugar in there from the sugar bowl. An owl ornament was flaunted on the other end of the spoon.

“I wonder when it’ll be invented…,” Lily thought to herself. They hadn’t invented a wizarding TV even in her time. Maybe someone would get an idea in the coming years and then all tournaments could be watched just like Muggle sports.

Lily’s mindset was less disturbed than before. She had already started to get used to the everyday life and activities of the past even though they didn’t have future gadgets to use here. Lily missed her phone and tablet especially much, because she had a habit of watching children’s cartoons from the tablet. Here, everyone possessed old mobile phones and they hadn’t even heard of tablets yet.

“It’s starting now,” Robertson commented at quicker rate than usually and upped the volume of the radio. The labours of the day had been done and a beautiful glimmer spread on the bleak and wet looking sky in the dusk.

 _“Bagman’s talking now,”_ a female commentator said, excited, and all attention was focused on Ludo Bagman’s speech when he had pronounced the charm _sonorus_.

“ _Ladies and gentlemen, the third and final task of the Triwizard tournament is about to begin! Let me remind you-_ ” and so the speech continued. After that a shrill blast of a whistle was hear and Harry Potter and Cedric Diggory got to canter into the labyrinthine terrain first.

Lily soon found out that sound had been quieted by magic in the maze. The hedges were apparently thick and tall and you couldn’t peep past them. There were reports from Harry’s and Cedric’s advancements all the time until they diverged from one another. Lily didn’t know who to root for. Both came from Hogwarts but she leaned on her father’s side a bit more. In any case, it was great to live during one of her father’s biggest memories, that Lily knew nothing about. So far it was also weird. Harry could have told about it to everyone on one day but Lily had never even heard of the Triwizard Tournament.

Magical reporting continued for a long time until all four persons had joined the rambling fun. Ludo Bagman was interviewed again and he was asked to comment on the starting race. There were some comments uttered about Dumbledore and the visiting heads of schools but Lily didn’t pay them any mind. She squeezed her quarter of a lemon for juice to pour into her salad and scavenged the dropped lemon seeds out from her plateful.

“Can I try to make these grow?” Lily asked Robertson, turning to face her. Robertson munched her salad and then drank juice before she answered.

“We need to buy soil. We can do that tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Lily said and put three seeds onto the table, on her napkin.

The salad tasted lemon and it fit the taste of shrimps magnificently. The thick sauce on top mixed onto the tomato slices that Lily pierced with her fork and transported to her mouth.

She had tied her hair with a ribbon and suddenly a tomato slice dropped onto her chest and then onto her lap.

“Bloody hell,” she cursed a bit and then picked it up from there and put it into her mouth.

_“Ah! Look at that finesse! I can’t believe she’s only a seventeen-year-old. Look, Rory! What gracefulness and handling of a wand!”_

_“I notice it. That truly required some Gryffindor courage! Points to her.”_

_“Orienteering becomes harder the further along the evening we go. It’ll be really dark in the maze soon if someone doesn’t light the place up a bit! Look how Potter goes- Ah, Cedric Diggory and Potter ran into each other! And Diggory seems to have experienced the oddities of the Hogwarts gamekeeper.”_

_“Could it be they’re illegal?”_

_“I doubt they are but I won’t ponder about it now. I need to cover this so here you have it! Oh, a Patronus! Did you see, Rory? Potter just Charmed a Patronus!”_

_“Agh, I didn’t see, Halle-, now I do! It’s beautiful! You should get extra points from that! How old is Harry Potter?”_

_“Could he be a fifteen-year-old? Or is he still fourteen? In any case, even some adults cannot produce a Patronus! Potter seems to have realized that the Ministry would never allow them to use a real Dementor in the competition. That kind of a Boggart can only be banished by laughter!”_

_“It’s all well and good. Let’s see what Fleur Delacour is doing there?”_

_“Where?”_

“Madeline?” Lily asked as the passionate narrative moved from Harry to the other combatants. “What’s a Patronus?” She had heard about it before but had never seen it.

“Patronus is a powerful charm made from a good memory which drives dark creatures, especially Dementors, away. It can also be used to send messages and I have heard of a case when one Arab used it to post his own letters. No ordinary person can do it, especially among adults. Life handles many roughly.” Robertson quit her explanation in a snell manner and stuffed more salad into her mouth. Lily was left to ponder the matter on her own and in the meantime, the sportscasters were frightened when they had lost two contestants. Cedric and Krum were nowhere to be seen.

_“Red sparks! Someone dropped out.”_

_“Who do you think it is-, ah, there go Diggory and Potter. Does this mean that Victor Krum is out of the competition?!”_

_“I wonder…,”_ Halle commented and sipped some drink. Then she perused some messages she had got and read diagnostics. Everything seemed to go outright very well. Lily heard takes on the Sphinx and soon both contestants were near the Triwizard Cup. Then a spider attacked.

 _“Would you look at that!”_ Halle shouted, baffled, and Lily was startled. “ _Potter and Cedric are helping each other to reach the cup!”_

_“What is this? Do they both want to win? Diggory was sure to win after that spider.”_

“Do they win together? Lily asked, taken aback, and frowned. She turned to face Robertson. “Can you do that?”

“I guess they can.” Robertson was wiping the corners of her mouth and pushed the empty plate away from herself. Additionally, she poured herself a glass of lemon juice and drank it. “Hogwarts won it all the same. it’s nice that the British won.” Robertson smiled and stood up.

_“What’s this?!”_

_“A Portkey! Should it have been a Portkey?”_ Halle shouted, shocked. _“Cedric Diggory and Harry Potter have been whisked away somewhere!”_

 _´A Portkey…,´_ Lily thought and stared eyes wide at the radio. Madeline Robertson washed their plates in the sink and didn’t comment. From the soap bubbles, a fresh smell of the dishwashing liquid spread into the apartment and it was almost dark outside. ´ _Why was it a Portkey? Do they exit the maze faster like that?_ ´

But, reputedly, Cedric and Harry didn’t show up anywhere nearby.

* * *

Igor Karkaroff had disappeared somewhere. Cedric Diggory had returned with Harry Potter onto the lawns of Hogwarts, although dead. Lily listened to the sportcasters’ frantic and desperate narrating that just continued. Someone was dead. Harry Potter had apparently said these words to Cornelius Fudge, when someone had tried to talk to the boy:

“He’s back, Voldemort’s back.”

And then Harry Potter too disappeared behind the ramparts of Hogwarts. The sportscasters were discussing a few dropped names and theorizing about what had happened and why the cup was a Portkey. No one wanted to say the accused perpetrators name, though. They even thought something funny had happened to Harry Potter’s head.

 _“But he’s been dead for what, thirteen years? How could he possibly be behind this!”_ Halle shouted, distraught.

_“I don’t know, let’s hope the Aurors, ah, there they come, make a sense out of this…”_

Robertson was deadly silent and solemnly listened to the continuing narrating. She rubbed her hands together and after that, squeezed them into fists by her sides. Lily didn’t understand anything else than that someone was dead. This was the reason her father had never mentioned this entire occasion.

“Someone died-,” Lily started.

“Cedric Diggory. I remember his name. This will become a scandal.” Robertson grimaced and glanced outside of the dark window. Only the streetlamps shed light onto the empty streets of London at this time. “You should go brush your teeth and go to sleep. I have to talk to Arnold.”

Lily went to the bathroom to shower and brush her teeth and didn’t hear what the adults were discussing amongst each other, but the atmosphere in the apartment had changed to grave. When Lily exited the bathroom, fully groomed, she scratched her head a bit and stared at Robertson who sat on her bed with her legs apart and whom stared at the floor, looking very serious.

“Um…is something wrong?” Lily asked carefully and stepped closer to her guardian.

Robertson sighed. “Yes. I have a problem. I don’t like the happenings of today one bit.”

“Are you talking of Cedric Diggory’s death, or?” Lily had hard time being very sad because she had never known Cedric Diggory in her life.

“It’s not about him. Or, well, it is.” Robertson sighed and frowned. She massaged her procerus muscle, tired, and then quit. “Have you ever heard of a He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named called person?”

Lily’s eyes widened. She blinked them a couple of times, baffled. “Who names themselves with such a long name?”

Robertson’s mouth opened a bit. She gazed at Lily. “Surely you have heard of him?” She sounded bewildered.

“No,” Lily answered. “I have never heard of him.”

Robertson stared at her with wide eyes and took a deep breath before she said: “Voldemort. Have you heard of him?” She squeezed her hands in front of her but otherwise seemed icy calm.

“No, I haven’t.” Lily frowned and her mouth tightened into a line. “Should I have heard of him?”

“Lily, tell me this. Is there a peace in the future?” Robertson asked and seemed high-strung. Robertson, who had said to Lily that she wouldn’t like to hear anything of the future. Lily didn’t doubt for a moment.

“Yes, we don’t have any wars. It’s peaceful.”

Robertson’s head flopped down and the strain on her shoulder abated. “Then I have hope. You see, I hate that man over all else. He killed my friend a long time ago.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Lily wondered. There was no longer any rumble from their radio and they didn’t serve night tea now. Arnold was probably smoking a cigarette on this peaceful night. At the same time, Cedric Diggory’s parents probably cried somewhere else and Harry Potter felt whatever he felt. It would all come in place in tomorrow’s newspaper.

“Because you must know of this man if he’s back as it was said. Namely, he’d kill children too if they cross him,” Robertson said severely and stared Lily into her eyes as if she wanted to emphasize this point in her message. “He must not return.”

“Is he a Dark Wizard?” Lily asked.

“Yes. The worst one. A terrorist. A racist. A murderer.”

“Then I hate him,” Lily said humorlessly and put her hand on Robertson’s shoulder. “Let’s wait for tomorrow’s Daily Prophet. I’m sure they’ll cover this tale.”

“Yes…you’re right.” Robertson laid her hand on top of Lily’s and they were like that for a while, until all lights were extinguished and both went to sleep, tense, but a stronger bond upon them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I've received 200 hits, oh my gosh, thank you guys. I'm so glad so many are interested in my writing <3


	4. Knowledge

It was quiet. The skyline had only started to properly become alight in the bathroom window and Lily gazed at it while having a toothbrush in her mouth. She took calm breaths and her gaze was serene and then her armpit started to itch. The demoralized mood of yesterday was still attached to her and it was as if being awake took effort on her part. Regardless, she, and very in character, continued to brush her teeth and then spat the contents of her mouth into the sink to rinse her mouth. Hopefully breakfast would be made of something else than cheese on a sandwich.

Finally, Lily patted her own face and looked at herself in the mirror. The hair was well done, there were no splatters on her nightgown and her mouth felt fresh. Even her face had been washed with soap and now it felt tight here and there. A determined yet tired face looked back at her from the mirror. Lily pressed the bridge of her nose and sighed. In the end, she grabbed the door handle and opened the bathroom door lock and went into their living room.

Madeline Robertson was awake. The clock was half past six in the morning. She had a cup of coffee and a peach in front of her and she was reading that day’s Daily Prophet. It had once again been delivered by owl around six o’clock in the morning, when Lily hadn’t been awake yet. Madeline didn’t go out often due to Lily so their only means of getting information was that newspaper and their guards, that had possibly already been switched that morning.

Lily went into her own room but didn’t close the door behind her. She was holding herself by the forearms when a large yawn sprang out from her chest and she started pulling the sleeves of her nightgown off from her arms. Lily wriggled between the folds. Her body pulsed heat in the coldness of the bedroom and when she finally got her nightgown off, her hair was in a tangle again.

Lily thought of Harry Potter and the Triwizard tournament when she pulled on her pants and put on a blue t-shirt. Then she couldn’t be bothered to put on her socks but sneaked straight into the kitchen by the cooktop.

“Could you put the water to boil? I don’t know how to use this stove,” Lily asked Robertson, who nodded above the newspaper and swung her wand once. The teapot twitched into moving and started flying things near the stove. One teaspoon of Earl Grey leaves fell into the tea strainer, after which the strainer shut itself. Then it dropped itself into the teapot that had wet itself under the faucet and was full of clear tap water. After this, right in front of Lily’s eyes, the pot floated straight onto one of the stove’s tops, after which the stove turned on.

´ _She could teach me how this is operated. Or should I have learned it by watching the process?_ ´ Lily thought, sullen, and another yawn sprang forth from her. Lily stretched her limbs a bit and turned to face Madeline Robertson. She was wearing a brown long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans and her feet were decorated by cute socks that had cartoon figures on them.

 _´I’ll read that after her.´_ Lily stared at the newspaper on which front page there were many headlines, but one was more important than the others: _Death at the Hogwarts Triwizard tournament and Cedric Diggory’s obituary_.

´ _I wonder what happens to the dead…,_ ´ Lily pondered for a moment and recalled every death she was familiar with and which stemmed from children’s cartoons. Reincarnation, angels, the circulation of a soul, resuscitation, necromancy… There were many of them.

The pot at the stove started spitting out steam and Robertson rose up to lift it off from the stove. Lily followed her actions carefully and shivered in front of the kitchen’s fridge.

Lily’s breakfast consisted of one peach, two cheese sandwiches and a glass of water. She would have liked to eat yoghurt but they weren’t in possession of any. So Lily sat at the table and gnawed at her food with less enthusiasm than she usually had. She glanced at the reading Robertson every now and then and kept biting the mass in her mouth slowly. She was fairly quickly done and was wiping crumbs off the table.

“Are you done soon?” Lily asked Robertson.

“Would you like to read the newspaper?” Robertson asked. She smiled shortly. “There you go. You should read this because if it’s true, it changes everything.”

Robertson folded the newspaper closed and handed it to Lily. After that she leaned backwards, clasped her hands in her lap and gazed outside the window. “According to weather reports, it should be a beautiful day today…”

So this day would be the same as those thirty-one days before this day. Lily’s mouth tightened into one tense line and she viewed the headlines of Daily Prophet.

_Death at the Hogwarts Triwizard tournament and Cedric Diggory’s obituary, pages 3-4._

_Cornelius Fudge’s interview, page 5._

_Many parents are worried about Hogwarts safety, page 6._

_Barty Crouch’s death, page 7._

_The financial crisis of Europe’s central banks, pages 8-9._

There were many headlines. She’d start at Cedric Diggory. She didn’t know if she could manage to read all the headlines but so long as she could read a few. Lily read slowly and with her nose almost pressed to the paper.

_DEATH AT HOGWARTS TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT_

_In the tournament of three European wizarding schools, there has been another death, so will the Triwizard tournament itself be canceled for good?_

_Last night, 24.6.1995, a tragedy without an equal was experienced on the lawns of Hogwarts when both Hogwarts champions returned to the castle by a surprise portkey. Harry Potter held Cedric Diggory long after this and wouldn’t let go even though the boy in question was already dead. Now, Aurors are looking for the culprit behind this scheme and the International Confederation of Wizards will decide later this month whether they should ban the Triwizard Tournament altogether._

_“It’s a very unfortunate accident. These things shouldn’t happen. We will do everything in our power to ensure the boy’s family gets all the support it needs,” said Solomon Lane from the Department of Magical Games and Sports. “The Ministry apologizes for its carelessness in the case. Something had gone wrong from the beginning.”_

_International Confederation of Wizards decided earlier last summer that deaths in the tournament are not acceptable in modern society. It granted the organizers about 400,000_ _galleon stimulus package, of which one of the main conditions was that only 17-years-old could compete. The competition, however, started with the premise of a compromise when Harry Potter, a 14-years-old, had to take part in the race. Now Potter has won the competition but at what cost? If one is to believe him, an old enemy of Britain and the entire Europe, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, is behind all of this._

_“The boy shall get all the help he’ll ever need,” Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic, ensured in his speech yesterday night. “This quite possibly doesn’t have anything to do with the aforementioned and notorious Dark Wizard, who hasn’t been seen, without a doubt, in the past thirteen years,” Fudge added. Fudge didn’t respond to the theories on You-Know-Who’s encroachment on the matters of Hogwarts in the recent years._

_The calculations made by the commission of the Triwizard tournament didn’t include any losses of life and everything should have been secure. Now the biggest question seems to be why the cup was a portkey. According to a debriefing by Albus Dumbledore, an old Death Eater, who died at the Azkaban prison many years ago, is the one responsible. Ministry Aurors did indeed apprehend Barty Crouch Jr at Hogwarts, but too late. There had been another accident and a Dementor nearby had managed to administer Crouch the Kiss before Hogwarts faculty managed to do anything about it. The Minister, however, denies any guilt on the proceedings._

_“Purely an accident! I have a right to protect myself when near a dangerous convict,” Fudge commented later._

_The biggest sufferers of the crisis are, however, Diggory’s circle of friends and his closest ones, whom will all be given all the support they need. It’s questionable if this is only the righting of small-scale wrongs when the attention should be focused on the bigger picture._

_“I knew right at the start that the Tournament was a bad idea!” Aya Grant, Department of International Magical Cooperation, says in an interview. “The money from that stimulus package could have been used for a much nobler cause, such as for the organizations for the homeless magical children and such.”_

_The death percentage of the Triwizard Tournament has been high for the entire run of its course, but in modern days, the danger seemed deceivingly small. Was there something wrong with the safety precautions? Should the tournament be cancelled altogether so that comparable happenings wouldn’t occur?_

Lily tried to understand what she was reading about. The amount of the stimulus package, why it had been given and why the Tournament was even organized was all lost to her. She tried to understand the text but the continuing use of political words in Cornelius Fudge’s interview only made her baffled. The Minister seemed to be a capable person who had had an accident. Madeline Robertson had moved outside to chat with their guardian.

Cedric Diggory was indeed dead and you couldn’t escape that reality. Whether the guilt lied with the Dark Wizard whom everyone talked about or if it was someone else, Lily felt attraction to the tragedy. She wanted to be sad for the others and respect Cedric’s memory in some way but couldn’t figure out how. Next, she read of Barty Crouch whom Robertson had told her about yesterday. A good employee of the Ministry, not a capricious person, very honest and respectable. According to Albus Dumbledore, killed by his son and turned into a bone.

´ _This is brutal…,_ ´ Lily thought. ´ _Why do things like this happen?_ ´

Lily eyed the name of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named on the pages. She also tried to seek out articles that talked of Harry Potter, but couldn’t find any. She turned back to page five, where the name of the Dark Wizard was standing out here and there. _´Is this your fault? Not my father’s for sure.´_

Fudge’s interview spoke of both Crouchs and the opposition of the Ministry and the practitioners of the Dark Arts. There was even mentioned some Alastor Moody and something of a scam but then there was also the lack of evidence.

´ _I don’t understand,_ ´ Lily thought and frowned. She shut the newspaper and Lily and Robertson went to get soil for the tiny seeds of lemon on that day.

* * *

A few weeks later, there was an article in the newspaper that spoke of how the International Confederation had cancelled all the upcoming Triwizard Tournaments. There wouldn’t be any to speak of ever again. This was received with divided tones, but Madeline Robertson ensured that this was for the greater good. That week’s female Auror also agreed when Lily listened in on her and Robertson’s talking from her room.

There was a seedling atop the soil in every lemon she had planted. She had put them to grow at her room’s window. There wouldn’t be any crop from them for many years if they didn’t die before that.

* * *

Later in July, Robertson read that Albus Dumbledore had stepped down from Wizengamot and this made her very worried and she, once again, bit her lip a lot. They abstained from visits to Diagon Alley and stayed in the Muggle side of Britain. Robertson brought more books into their apartment and started reading more than what was usual. Lily didn’t know what she read because every time she asked, she was driven off. There accumulated over a dozen titles, however.

“You should be heading home already,” Robertson groaned at Lily one day, when they were eating.

Telling the truth, Lily hadn’t heard anything about her pendant and the research that went into it so she had even forgotten about the whole ornament. But now the case started to bother her too. She had already been in the past for almost three months and had seen quite a lot. Now she missed her home and every now and then Lily felt shuddering bouts of homesickness.

“Are there any books about time-travel?” Lily asked on one day when the nerve of the situation had transpired to her too.

“Do you mean novels or nonfiction?” Robertson asked, slurping her tea. “There’s many novels, especially in the Muggle world, but nonfiction is rare. You can only find such books at the magical side and even those are made of essays. Time is only being studied.”

“Oh…,” Lily’s eagerness wilted there and she was visibly disappointed.

The green flora of the banks of the roads and the streets’ trees started changing their colour when this had been going on for a couple of weeks. Summer was ending and Lily was more and more depressed when there was no news from the Ministry. According to Robertson, they’d contact them at their own pace and time, but Lily started to think that they should specifically ask from the Ministry at what stage they were in in the correction of the case. Even the newspaper only features stories of European banks and the new decrees of the Ministry and its ever-straining policies. Nobody wanted to talk about the Dark Wizard who had been in the headlines after Cedric’s death. Robertson had taught Lily that no one called him by his real name, that the man was nicknamed everywhere, even in the newspapers, as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Lily accepted this and didn’t speak of this tenuous personality at all. Robertson didn’t seem to want to reference him in their apartment and Lily respected her decision. However, this also meant that Robertson hardly told anything about the wizard to Lily and she didn’t share her own experiences.

At the start of August, a matter which involved Lily greatly transpired. They got a letter that contained a Ministry seal by an owl. The documents included there seemed to be very official. Among other things, there was a passport for Lily and many other papers. Robertson’s fingers flied below the letters of the mail and she read everything through furiously. She looked at the already signed and filled papers and her own certifications and compared them to Lily’s papers.

“We can walk more freely thanks to this.” Robertson brandished the letter in her fingers in the air and took Lily’s passport away from Lily’s hands. “I’ll be carrying this and these documents. I also have a meeting with a Ministry employee and I can’t take you with me. The meeting’s a couple of weeks away, it’s on the 13th of August.”

“Are you going to ask when I’ll get home?” Lily asked with her arms crossed. An uninvited burning sensation of hope had bothered her afterwards, when the owl had left, but now it was already abating.

“I will. Many Ministry employees are on their summer vacation now so, immediately after the mister who wrote all of this has returned to Britain, I’ll go to him.” Robertson put the papers into her own bag and cleaned the table. “Now I have something to say to you.” She went to sit at the table and clasped her hands together. Lily stood next to the table.

“Since the debriefing of your situation has arrived, I can assume that you will assuredly stay here for many more months. That’s why you got the passport. According to official records, you’ve always been a British citizen but your parents are dead. I’m your official guardian. The case proceeds a bit differently than at the Muggle side, so I don’t need to fill any adoption papers at all. You’ll still be my ward for a long time. That’s what this letter and passport mean. They haven’t been able to properly start the research because I’m sure they don’t want this to lead to any deeper wounds in the space and time continuum.”

“Space and time continuum? Can it be wounded?”

“According to some essays, yes, it can. And we have experience of people leaving our current time only. Your parents are hard-pressed to think that you have time travelled. The biggest solution they’ll probably arrive to is our kidnapping theory. Your parents are looking for you in the wrong place, maybe abroad. Don’t tell me about your father!” Robertson quickly raised her hands up when Lily was about to open her mouth.

“Can’t I leave them some message?”

“You can’t. It would probably be wiped away, if one is to believe Usman Hameed, one essay writer. You see,” and now Robertson started to gesture with her hands, a serious and focused look on her face. “Time is linear. You shouldn’t even have been born yet so leaving messages might affect _the balance._ And there’s no guarantee that your message would arrive to your parents. According to some, time is always fixing itself, which is why the Ministry allowed small-scale time travel a few years back. We trusted that nothing malign would ever happen. It was naïve. Even if your message would arrive to them, we still can’t fix the situation from our end. At the worst-case scenario, someone would follow you and that could lead to bigger problems. It’s better if only one person time travels than if the entire Department of Unspeakables time traveled. I could imagine your father following you here- should he know about what has happened -, but the things is, we don’t need your father here. Your father has no authority here and it could even turn into a nasty legal battle. It’s better that you leave nothing behind you or try to find the means to return to your own time on your own. It could prove to be dangerous. By the way, can you count how magic affects time?”

“No.”

“Me neither, but according to the newest research, such is the case. There are even theories in which magic affects each of us differently. And you can’t go into the future with our Time Turners, only to the past. Everything is still work in the process, if you catch my meaning. But at least you have a passport now and you won’t get any weird ideas to carry out on your own.”

“I won’t. I don’t want to break time,” Lily noted earnestly but Robertson couldn’t be mistaken about her depression. She slipped a small smile at the girl.

“Cheer up. This will all get sorted out.”

“What if I have to live here with you? What if I never get back home?” Lily blinked her eyes rapidly but red spots started to appear at their sides and on top of her nose.

“Then you must live at the mercy of time and I’ll be with you for a long time.” Robertson looked pitying. “This is probably not the end of it. Our Unspeakables are very skilled. I think they’ll manage to sort this out during this year. If not, then you’ll definitely see your parents and friends in the future, you’re still so young. We just don’t want to make hasty decisions.”

“I hope so,” Lily said and rubbed her nose with her hand.

* * *

There was seldom anything to do in their apartment. The days passed intermittently but even following them turned into standing on ceremony. Lily either read one of Robertson’s books in her room until she got bored and started drinking tea, or then she imagined all kinds of things and tried to draw on parchment with a pen. That too turned to self-repeating business and soon she gave up on art altogether. She no longer had inspiration to try anything, so waking up during morning started stretching into the day side. There were no computers or phones or games. You couldn’t go out just like that. Even their Auror snuffed his tobaccos off against the exterior wall and was away every now and then. Aurors had been rented an apartment just opposite theirs. Not that anyone strolled in the hallways but they had neighbors too. One cultivated flowers in their apartment. Lily had seen the woman’s residence and had smelled the distinct blend of smells caused by the flora in their stairway when they had gone to visit the grocery store.

Robertson made pasta foods frequently. Even so much that you got sick of them. The woman was clearly trying to save some money and Lily understood that they had some kind of a budget in which there weren’t that many investments in clothes or games. With the autumn toiling away, Robertson bought her a red coat that had a protective coating for rain for later periods. They hadn’t visited Diagon Alley for over a month and Robertson’s meeting at the Ministry got ever closer to them.

In Lily’s opinion, the days went idly by. In Robertson’s opinion, time flew by fast.

* * *

The 13th of August was Monday. Then Robertson woke early in the morning, went to wash her teeth in their colorless bathroom and dressed in her better clothes. She took everything she needed with her in her bag, including Lily’s papers, and went to wake the girl up. She had already earlier let Auror Ela Bates inside their apartment and now this woman sipped coffee at Lily and Robertson’s table.

Lily didn’t want to get out of the bed at all. Finally, at Robertson’s behest, the girl hauled herself to sit and listened to her guardian’s words that were repeated in her direction from the door to Lily’s room. Robertson had already donned her trench coat and she was tying her shoelaces.

“Be nice now. This should take a couple of hours, taking into account London’s traffic. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to Apparate so I must order a cab and then walk. I’ll bring all the intel that has to do with you, back to you, don’t worry. Gibson will accompany me to the meeting. On the other hand, you have yet to meet Gibson. He’s taking care of your papers and takes care of the matching records in the Muggle world.”

“Yes, yes…,” Lily yawned, seemingly disgruntled, and pulled the sleeves of her nightgown up and scratched her left arm. She had finally learned how to operate the stove and would go to make herself some tea as soon as Robertson was gone. They had bought different sets of tea during their last grocery shopping.

Lily squeezed the bridge of her nose (a habit learned from Robertson) and listened to the woman’s speech. She pawed her bed with her feet and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll come, I’ll come,” Lily yawned and rose up in the dark room.

“Good. Now you know that you can’t go outside or go to a store with Bates. She’s here only to supervise you.” Robertson was already at the front door when Lily poked along over the threshold of her room and scoped for the clock on their kitchen wall.

Quarter past seven in the morning. It seemed cloudy outside. Bates shrugged at Robertson’s retorts and then Robertson did something odd. Specifically, she loped over to Lily, next to the stove and gave her a little kiss on top of her head and then tousled her hair. Lily was astonished and immediately awake.

“Why did you do that?” Lily asked, baffled. Robertson just stared at her, wondering.

“Because I wanted to. Well, see you later today.” And then she almost flew out of the door and the door snapped locked. Lily was left to stand where she had stood while Bates smelled of tobacco and read Daily Prophet.

“Now there’s only me and you.” Lily turned to face Bates. “What’s your name? You’re new.”

“I am Ela Bates. I became an Auror four years ago. Nice to meet you.” Bates set down her cup and offered Lily her hand. Lily squeezed it but all the while wondering at the woman. She, however, behaved very unabashedly because the apartment had been her home for such a long time.

Robertson’s clothes were now missing from their coat rack and Bates’ coat hung on it and her shoes, that had little mud on them, had been adjusted neatly on a sheet of paper from the newspaper next to the door.

On that morning, Lily brewed herself rooibos tea and read the newspaper once Bates had abandoned it on the table. Lily’s summer vacation had been such for a long time.

* * *

Lily was observing her lemon seedlings in her own room (she had wet them with tap water earlier today) when Robertson returned at about five o’clock. She looked entirely controlled but there were creases between her eyebrows that indicated a troubled mind.

“It’s horrible,” Robertson commented and hung her coat on a hook. “Not a single word,” she continued and went to go get some of the tea Lily had brewed again. This time it was Earl Grey.

“What’s wrong?” Ela Bates asked and inched to the side on her chair, creating a gaze aimed at Robertson. “Did you figure something out?” Lily listened on the other chair.

“A boy dies in the Triwizard Tournament and not a word of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! As a matter of fact, it seemed like no one was given a permission to even utter that name in the Ministry. Here’s the magazine you sought out, by the way.” Robertson gave a cheered up looking Bates a magazine of which front page was covered in brilliant colours. “You can fill your crossword puzzles in peace.”

“Should they talk about it?” Lily asked and leaned backwards with a slouch.

“Yes, they should! We could be in danger! Or at least you could be. There could be spies in the Ministry again and no one is batting an eye!” Robertson cried out and she crashed onto her bed to sit. She seemed somber and discouraged. Then she startled.

“Oh yes, they haven’t been able to put much research into that pendant of yours. They fear they’ll break it,” Robertson commented in a much calmer tone but she squeezed the handle of her teacup with white knuckles. “They haven’t figured anything else out than that it doesn’t use the same mechanism our Time Turners use. They had summoned a goblin to appraise its alloy.”

“How does that affect whether I go back home or not?” Lily asked frowning.

“I don’t know. I guess they want to be sure of everything. You should, however, get comfortable and brace yourself for a long visit. I’d much sooner worry about the anarchy. The Ministry cannot weasel itself out of this situation, it’s irresponsible-”

“Now, now,” Ela Bates calmed her down and polished her wand against the sleeve of her shirt. “Maybe we ought not to do this in front of Emma-”

“She must hear this. This has to do with her! We aren’t safe anymore,” Robertson lost her temper and sipped her tea. “I already mentioned about that fact to Ellie. She asked Nicolas to contact me. Fudge seems to want to forget this entire mess. As if Europe would forget the boy’s death! This should be looked into much better but now even Albus Dumbledore cannot do anything about it…”

“I think that’s for the best. You should hear even half of the things that man says and you’d notice where that man’s thoughts run to,” Bates snorted but this made Robertson stop entirely. Lily sensed tension in the air and stared in turns at Robertson and Bates in their sitting arrangement.

“Albus Dumbledore isn’t mad. You-Know-Who is capable of working in secrecy. What if we get more surprise attacks?”

“I doubt there will be. Harry Potter can talk whatever he wants to talk about but I don’t believe his words at all. I have read so much questionable stuff about him. Someone should examine the boy.”

Lily was entirely quiet in her chair but a light breeze of exasperation started to slowly flare in her chest.

“Is Harry Potter mad?” Lily asked. “I don’t think he’s mad. He’s a fine person.”

“People have talked of Harry Potter and You-Know-Who for the entire run of the boy’s school career. Every year another tale is brought forth, each greater than the last, and Albus Dumbledore always sponsors this stupidity,” Ela Bates answered and sighed into her wand. She lifted the wand up against their ceiling light and closed her other eye to see the cracks on its surface better. “The things is, no one will want to work at Hogwarts if the old clique of teachers won’t change.”

“Why not?” Lily asked.

Robertson sighed. “Don’t you care about that. Someone your age shouldn’t care about these things. I’m sorry you had to hear this at all.”

But Bates and Robertson said their goodbyes to each other a little colder than usually and there was somehow a bad mood in the air after all of that.

 _´Was dad mad?´_ She thought till late night and tried to deny the truth in that sentence without succeeding. She wanted to believe both adults that took care of her. On that night, Lily slept badly.

* * *

Lily was in for another visit to a doctor on the same day as Dolores Umbridge took up the deserted post of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher with the Ministry backing in Hogwarts. The next day, Sturgis Podmore was arrested for a break-in to the Department of Mysteries.

It was just the place where Lily’s pendant was being examined and where information of Lily was being stored at. Robertson was like a hawk and followed the news and tried to get more information out of the Aurors without much success. To some, it was a small-scale outrage, to others, it was a sign of a much bigger issue.

According to Robertson, the Ministry wanted to compensate to the parents for the death that happened on last semester, and use its might, but she pointed out that this was about two men. Lily didn’t understand much of the disagreements between Albus Dumbledore and Cornelius Fudge. She just paired her socks that had been through Robertson’s drying charm. Robertson was good at household charms.

* * *

Robertson’s skin had tanned during the summer. Lily, on the other hand, was as pale as usually because she didn’t go out often. Robertson felt responsible to get Lily moving a bit so they danced every now and then. Then the table had been hauled to the side and the chairs had been piled on top of it. Robertson’s bed had been folded back into its magical suitcase so they could utilize the space fully. On the 34th week of the year, August, they danced without any limits, in tune with the classical music coming from Robertson’s radio, even though Lily was too short in the arms and legs to be her partner.

“In this dance, the legs go like this,” Robertson guided Lily and observed her footwork. “Good, exactly like that. This isn’t ballet, don’t do that. You’ll turn into a good dancer one day!”

Lily laughed and had fun. She was becoming quite exalted with Robertson’s encompassing knowledge on dances and felt growing respect for the woman. After that one day, Robertson hadn’t given Lily any kisses or tousled her hair even during the pauses. She just seemingly enjoyed Lily’s company till she ran out of breath. There was always the danger of someone from the downstairs coming to complain to them about the loudness of the music or their dancing steps. However, a nice way to pass time was founded from all the practice.

Lily graced Robertson’s hand and they twirled on the floor.

* * *

It was 11th September- Someone was running lightly on the pavement opposite of Lily’s window. Newly started rain poured as if from a tub onto everything that was outside, and Lily was watching it at the same time as she was pouring water for her lemon seedlings. She was wearing a dress which Robertson had bought her from a sale happening at a small boutique in London. In her feet, she was wearing Robertson’s bigger wool socks. The duvet had been folded neatly on top of her bed and the room had been aired before the rain. The water dribbled from the watering can’s nose into the black soil and even slightly overflowed. Then Lily realized what was happening and stopped the tipping.

“Well, damn,” she cursed a bit and quickly wiped the hand that the water had splashed. The sleeve of the dress had gone dark with the water.

Today, she was at home alone, which was rare. Robertson and the Auror of the day had gone out together and Lily had had to promise to be nice and not to do anything rash. Not that anything rash would have even occurred to Lily. She had never wanted to contact her teenage parents even though she had wanted to see them young. But because you couldn’t go to Hogwarts, she had to discard this plan. So, she just swayed from one room to another and played solitaire alone on the kitchen table to kill time.

She watched the vertically arranged lines and moved three of diamonds over a four of spades. Time passed by nicely when you played cards. Lily wasn’t able to listen to the radio as much anymore so it stayed off. Its persistently yelling commentators on that one station didn’t manage to entertain her like they had done before. So, she entrusted the comfort of time with cards and drawing.

Robertson had joined in some circle, amidst which they planned to form some security gang around Lily. They didn’t behave like sectarians but, at one time, Lily had woken up around eleven o’clock and listened to how five adults spoke quietly at their dining table and they discussed shifts happening at their home but also at some Department. Robertson had been uncharacteristically frenetic and had counted everything on some Callum Bennet. He’d organize the guard shifts and would make information go around should something happen. At least that’s what was planned. Then someone came to watch Lily sleep for a tiny moment (which was the most disturbing thing Lily had experienced in a while) before the discourse had moved onto some foreigners and an Order. Lily had been wide awake when Arthur Weasley’s name had been mentioned. This incident had been at least a week ago.

Now Robertson had taken it upon herself to disappear every now and then with an Auror (sometimes they just went into the Auror’s apartment to talk) and Lily was left to be irked at these events.

In the middle of September, they had talked of moving abroad, something about France and its _Brigadiers_ that apparently were the equivalent of the British Auror Department.

All of this, Lily had learned by eavesdropping. These discourses came and went and she was usually ready to lose an hour or two of her nightly sleep especially when Robertson herself didn’t always manage to wake up till it was a daytime.

Alan Dunphy, Arnold, Gibson, Ela Bates, Gabby Gill, Eli Jenkins, Callum Bennet…Lily’s protectors amounted to many names these days. And, of course, Robertson was counted amongst this guard. Lily just didn’t understand why the security had been tightened immediately after Cedric’s death. Ela had said it was paranoid on one day. Lily didn’t know what to believe in when even the adults weren’t sure.

* * *

It was night. Nothing else was heard in the apartment except some snorts, and down below some cars sped up, driving past their house. Lily didn’t sleep but stared at the ceiling, tired, belly full of tea and cheese sandwiches. And no yoghurt, again.

She thought of her own room in the future; Tried to remember its colours and patterns, the interior of her wardrobe (Lily only had a couple of clothes in the past) and hot sandwiches that her mother had sometimes made for them in the mornings. They had a heel of a bread, that had ham on it, then a tomato slice, oregano and cheese. On top of that, once they had come back from the oven, you put a pineapple ring. Lily liked pineapples. There was just that something about them that life needed.

Then her thoughts turned to cats. They had had two. Licorice and Shorty. She had been without her cat friends for almost five months. Almost half a year in the past. She could no longer recall her mother’s voice with clarity or knew where they kept the sugar pot these days. Tears started to develop in Lily’s eyes even though she was frowning and had her hands clasped together on top of the duvet. It was slightly cold.

Lily got up and the bed creaked. Her door wasn’t open so she took hold of the door handle and opened it. No one told her anything. It happened all the time and Robertson’s friends had now left them on their own earlier than usually. Lily didn’t know if a bigger party guarded them than on last Friday but she noticed that she didn’t care much.

Lily stepped over the threshold and went over to the fridge. She took a carrot out of there and cut both of its ends off. Robertson puffed in her own bed calmly and with a book by her pillow. Lily had just put the carrot into her mouth, still frowning, when outside their front door was heard a thump.

Lily stopped. She first stared at their front door for a moment and then her gaze turned on Robertson. There were a hundred reasons why there could be a thud behind their door but this one made her awake for some reason.

Lily took steps towards the door. She heard quiet speech.

“…shoot it.”

“I won’t. We were just supposed to get the girl.”

The sentences stopped Lily’s thoughts for a moment and she startled. She stared at the door until she realized, that someone was trying to open it on the other side. Their locked door. Lily went to quickly wake Robertson. She took quick steps next to Robertson’s bed, put her hand on top of her mouth and jolted her awake.

Robertson woke up soon and stared Lily in wonder when another thud was heard from the hallway. Robertson’s hand lifted over to Lily’s and she gently moved it away from her mouth.

“What in the world-” Robertson said, frowning, and then there was a clear incantation said.

“ _Imperio,_ ” someone spoke and there was once again only silence outside.

Robertson’s wand was in her hand fast as lightning and she threw Lily into her own room and closed the door afterwards.

“Arnold is possibly out,” Robertson muttered quietly under her breath. Lily heard that. She bit a piece off the carrot and munched it quietly and tried to listen to what happened in their living room in the following moments.

There was a moment when the front door opened and Robertson hissed out a _Protego._ Then it sounded like something had filled the entire space with something, after which Lily heard nothing. Her heart beat frantically in her chest and Lily backed off against her bed. The ever dark of the room would have been perfect if you couldn’t see the flashes of light shown underneath the door and London’s streetlamps wouldn’t have lighted the ceiling. A couple of steps that you could make out as shades and then someone turned the handle of the door to Lily’s room. Hairs standing on end, Lily felt how the door was opened by another wizard that she didn’t know. Robertson was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you the only one here?” The wizard asked. He looked to be a near 30-year-old man that had a dark swirling puffy hair and a stubble. He was wearing a bomber jacket, big boots that resembled army boots and dark trousers. He swung his wand once and a light lit up on its end. _Lumos._

The wizard observed the room, first at the left, then at the right. He advanced slowly as if waiting for an attack but when it never came, he lowered his wand at Lily’s face.

“Red hair, brown eyes and peach-colored nightgown. It’s you. Put this on your head,” the wizard said to a petrified and surprised Lily. She was offered a bandana. “Put it over your eyes. So that you can’t see anything. If you don’t do it, I’ll petrify you.”

Lily saw the man’s hips in the light of _Lumos_. There bobbed a gun in a holster. A true gun, probably.

An uncertain hunch, that she should be screaming, awoke in Lily. The man backed off from the room on the orders of someone else and Lily saw with her eyes wide that Robertson was lying on the floor. There was blood dripping from her head on to the floor.

Lily tied the bandana over her eyes very quietly and was left waiting for the next orders. She didn’t dare to scream. She couldn’t have dreamed of something like this happening. A gun. Someone had brought a gun into their apartment even though they were wizards!

Steps of the men, those she heard. Someone had removed that voice insulating spell. Someone grabbed her by the midriff and raised into a hold next to himself like a sack. It was another man. Lily smelled and felt leather against her cheek and some sweet smell. Neither of the men used smelly deodorants or fragrances.

“Let’s leave. They’re awaiting us.” Lily heard from the man’s mouth. The voice was gruff and there was a slight foreign accent to it.

Someone’s _Lumos_ lighted wand passed by Lily’s eyes and then Lily didn’t hear or smell anything anymore. She was carried away from the room and Lily felt how the man stepped over someone else.

´ _Arnold_ ,´ Lily panicked in her mind and tried to be as quiet and nice as possible. Were there any others that had fallen? It was dark only and she only felt the lifts and then it was like someone had dunked her in cold water. It would surely look weird to the night strollers if these men just carried her out of their apartment and into the streets. Someone would call for help. Someone would know what to say to the police.

But no one answered Lily’s frightened ponderings. The men didn’t go out but walked down the stairs until their stopped on one of the platforms. Then Lily felt how she was moved into a better grip and position by the man’s side, until she felt something grip her stomach and she felt like she stretched into nil.

They disappeared that night from Robertson’s and her apartment to unknown roads. The men had surely loitered around their house for days. Lily’s small officials and Robertson weren’t any resistance to them


	5. Lord Voldemort

The smell of rain and moist air drifted in from the open window. Lily stared at unfamiliar landscapes: lush meadows and hills, the dark spotty surface of a nearby lake, and gray skies from which water poured down intermittently. The distant landscapes were covered with a gray curtain and some individual trees disappeared in that rain. The lake almost steamed. There was loud noise coming from the gutters of the house as water circled through them and ran down the chutes. Piano playing reached her from upstairs and to Lily’s untrained ear, the melody sounded quite competent.

Lily stared out of the window calmly and also tried to listen to the adults conversing behind the thick ornate oak doors. Lily squeezed the scarf, which she had only been allowed to take off in this room about half an hour ago, in her palms.

The room was full of different shades of green. The walls were deep emerald colour, had wallpaper, and were adorned with a golden border. There was a painting on top of the double doors, where a boy with red pants was trying to run through the woods with two big dogs.

The golden ornamentation continued all the way to the ceiling and various curls adorned the borders of the ceiling. The room had a large fireplace with an old fireplace screen in front. Above the fireplace, in golden frames, was a large woman in the plushiest dress, with one foot visible under her skirt. White shoes with buckles donned her feet. A pink scarf was tied at her waist and her neckline almost revealed voluminous breasts. This woman had her white hair up and it had decorations in it, and she had a pretty smile on her features, that didn’t move. There was no name on the picture or at least Lily didn’t see one. Opposite Lily were other doors that were just as decorative as their cousins. The room sported two sofas and a few chairs. On top of the fireplace and on the small tables were the same sets of lamps, each with five lamps. There were two windows in the room and Lily sat sideways in front of one of them. Next to her was an old-fashioned desk with books and writing instruments on top. For some reason, the rain never damaged any of these but hit a kind of an invisible wall when trying to leak inside, and the drops faded.

Lily’s nightgown hugged her figure and, thanks to the low chair, her legs hit the carpet that had swirls and vegetation to garnish it. It was a very nice lounge or similar kind reception area. Lily eyed the fountains in the yard and the hedgerow footpath. She didn’t know where she was.

There was laughter outside the room. Lily started to freeze so she got up from the chair, dragging the said chair in front of the window and got onto it to close the window. The act was successful.

“Hrr,” Lily grit her teeth and rubbed her arms. She was just dragging the chair back to its old place when the mighty oak doors opened and a woman with almost white hair, donning a dark blue dress, entered. Her hands were in front of her. This woman was followed by one house-elf and one man in dark clothes.

“Were you cold?” The woman’s voice was clear and almost comforting. Lily was puzzled by the attention this brought on her and she nodded slowly and set the chair in place just as slowly. She no longer went to sit on the chair.

“You have no other clothes than that. I’ll bring you some old children’s clothes. They are made for a boy though.” The woman smiled and the house-elf with her bowed and disappeared. Lily glanced at her clothes and didn’t move from behind the chair. It was between her and this woman.

“We’re also looking for something for you to eat. Do you want sweets? There’s some in that box on that desk. You can take as many as you want,” the woman commented again and pointed to the old desk.

Lily nodded cautiously once more and tried to stealthily stare into the hallway. Those two men that had brought her here were no longer to be seen anywhere. The woman, also, didn’t offer Lily her name or the name of her companion. She felt as if this woman wouldn’t be listening to her properly if she started asking questions.

“I’ll have a portion of food sent to your room. We have a room for you in the north wing of the building. It should be cool enough for you to withstand the autumn heat.”

“Am I moving here?” Lily asked in amazement. She didn’t come up with anything else to say.

“Yes, you’re moving. You will be taken care of until you have told us everything we need to know. The Lord himself will talk with you later today.”

“Lord?”

“You will see.” The woman smiled and turned around. She gestured with her hand for Lily to follow her.

“Let’s go. I will show you to your room.”

“But-, hey, how long do I have to be here?” Lily asked, surprised. The woman seemed somehow arrogant.

“You will see.” She got as an answer and the woman started walking out of the room.

Lily took cautious steps towards the woman and kept her hands limp on either side of her. She stared at the ever-revealing dark corridor. There were works of art everywhere and the wallpapers were nice. Some of the paintings moved but there were only a few of these. They walked past at least three mirrors, the same recliners and small tables. There were small crystal chandeliers on the ceiling and the rain pounded against the windows. The hallway was not as wide as Lily had imagined and they soon came in front of the massive main staircase. The woman started climbing the stairs, holding the hem of her skirt, and Lily followed her, marveling at the house whenever she noticed no attention was paid to her. The woman must have been listening to the thuds from Lily’s legs and trusted that she would be followed.

Lily didn’t say a word except when directly spoken to. They trudged forward on old oriental rugs and passed one small staircase leading up. The wallpaper changed and so did the wall panels. At the end of the hallway you could just see a large closet that could certainly have led to Narnia. They turned left and arrived int front of an open door. Next to the door was a large antique pot on a pedestal.

The woman walked in and gestured Lily to come after her. Inside, three portmanteaus, with their straps opened from their buckles, awaited them, and one house-elf weaved their way to one case in particular all the time. A lot of different clothes had been placed on the large bed – all of them followed almost the same monochromatic color scheme – and there were shoes in front of the bed, on the carpet. These were certainly the old clothes for a child the woman had talked about. Lily’s attention was drawn to the dark shorts and a white ruffle collared shirt. The clothes looked well-tended to and had no animal hairs or stains at all. The elf stroked one shirt in front of Lily with their hands and then popped in front of another case.

Lily raised her gaze from the clothes and surveyed the room. It was with a high ceiling and dark in colour. The other wall had a large fireplace and large windows were flanked by dark curtains. The place had recently been ventilated, Lily smelled it, and, at the same time, a smell of smoke permeated the inside air. Had the fireplace been spitting a little while ago? The carpets were oriental, continuing with the style of the rest of the house Lily had seen. They came with floral and other geometric patterns. Next to the door was a lacquered little table. Likewise, on both sides of the bed, a bedside table adorned the place with an ornate lamp. In front of the hearth was one single armchair upholstered in olive green velvet fabric. There was also a large wooden wardrobe that looked a bit like the hallway closet.

Lily scratched her arm hesitantly and glanced at the woman, who was eying the clothes with a finger on her chin, every now and then. There was a full-length mirror behind the woman.

“This will do. And this. This is too old and doesn’t fit her. That, take that from there,” the woman said to the elf and lifted one shirt to her eye-level. Lily was quiet.

“Well now. We’re starting to be ready,” the woman commented after a few minutes had passed and turned to Lily. “Rordey’s leaving this room in a moment so we can start trying these on.”

Lily turned to face the house-elf, who snapped their fingers once and the portmanteaus organized into a neat pile. Then the elf bowed and a lone ‘pop’ was heard and after that, the elf wasn’t seen anywhere in the room.

“Try that pair. They seem to suit you,” the woman said to Lily and handed her a pair of clothes. Lily took them and smelled some clothing product in their yarn, and afterwards, was left to stare at the woman.

“Try them on now. Or do you want some privacy? Hold on.” The woman’s wand slid from her sleeve to her hand and the woman waved it once in a fine arc. A screen with bird-themed patterns glistening at the gilded spots began to form in front of Lily’s eyes.

“Go behind that. You can get some peace.”

Lily did as she was instructed and did not comment on the woman’s magic thereafter. She went behind the screen and started taking her nightgown off. It was swapped for a white ruffle shirt with sleeves too long for her and black shorts she had looked at before. Lily also wore white socks and shiny black shoes on her feet. She came out behind the screen quickly and showed up at the woman who nodded.

“I thought it would fit. I’ll put Deemey to shorten the sleeves and after that, it’ll fit you like it was made for you. Next.” The woman clapped her hands together twice and Lily didn’t know what to do at first. Then she suddenly realized that she should go pick the next pair of clothes by herself and so she did. This continued for at least an hour according to Lily’s internal clock. Actually, less time had probably passed, as this was usually the case when she tried to guess the passage of time.

“Stop. Those are not for you. They’re too boyish.” The woman said, saucy, as she sat in the lounge chair. Once again, Lily didn’t say a word and went back behind the screen and changed her clothes. Before she had the chance to don her old nightgown, the woman’s voice was heard.

“Choose one of them to wear and be dressed for the rest of the day. I’ll send your nightgown to the wash. It’s dirty.” Send to wash…didn’t that sound sublime. Usually Lily would have just thrown it in the laundry basket but here clothes were apparently washed right away. Lily did as she was told once again and soon she stood in front of the mirror in black shorts and a ruffle shirt with sleeves wrapped up, socks and black shoes. In this house, you apparently used shoes inside the house as well.

“I’ll leave you here for a while now,” the woman commented at the door, looking at Lily through her eyelashes. They seemed to curve beautifully and were pale and long. The woman seemed healthy anyway.

“Tibney is sure to take care of the horses in the stables now, but she will come to you later to clean up this mess. Deemey will provide you with a tray of food in this room. You don’t have to leave here unless there is an emergency. You’ll find the toilet at the end of the corridor.”

“Hmm,” Lily nodded in embarrassment and jerked the cuff of the shirt. Her heels clicked as she walked away and Lily could still hear them as she walked down the stairs. She closed the door and silence filled the room. It had been a quick introduction.

She had been kidnapped. Some old Lord would come to see her. Would she be sold later?

Lily thought of Tibney and the horses. She went to the window. From there, you could see a well-kept garden where all the shrubs were cut to shape. There were also fountains in the garden. Far away trees grew in thickets or alone and Lily saw fields as far as the eye could see. She pressed her nose to the window and eyed the forest at the edges of the plot. If she climbed down from the window by the ivy vine, would she have time to run into the forest line and escape? Would Robertson or someone else from the ministry find her? Down below loomed some bushes whose branches had drooped down because of the rain.

Maybe that was all very notional. She didn’t even know the name of this place or where in British Islands she dwelled right now. She had never even seen anything this oddly stale though solemn manor house. When she was being transported, she had occasionally only smelled dust, fuel and rain and the scarf hadn’t been ever removed from her eyes. What roads had they used to come here? Probably roads in very poor shape because Lily hadn’t been Transfigured into a button or that kind of a thing.

Lily had to visit the loo a little after this and she opened the door of her room gingerly and slipped out. She took a while opening unknown doors and finding the bathroom but she did find it eventually. Coming back, there was a house-elf in her room again, who was folding the clothes back into the portmanteaus. Lily arrived quietly and the house-elf didn’t stop while making the space uncluttered again. Lily went to sit in the armchair by the hearth and was silent, watching the comings and goings of the house-elf.

“Your clothes are in the wardrobe henceforth,” the house-elf uttered and clicked their fingers. The doors of the wardrobe creaked open and four shirts, a couple of tights, a few pairs of socks and different trousers flew in there. The most-fancy clothes the house-elf had hanged up on hangers and by snapping their long gnarly fingers, they flew to the hanging rail of the closet. Finally, the doors of the wardrobe closed.

Three large portmanteaus hovered in the air around the elf, when they tightened the straps into their buckles. Lily raised her feet onto the chair and hugged her knees. She eyed the hearth and the firewood basket next to it. After this, thoughts of Robertson filled her mind. She thought of her surely cold body at the floor of their apartment and tried to imagine the woman here in this manor with her. Lily had grown a bit attached and at least she had been trustworthy even though she wasn’t her mother. Then she thought of Arnold and the other Aurors and tried to imagine and hope that one of the people in the early shift had already found the people lying there and had transported them to St Mungo’s or to someplace safe.

Lily felt feeble anyway. She was at the same time very dissatisfied and scared. She didn’t dare to ask the house-elf anything. They worked with her kidnappers and surely reported anything of use to them. Lily fixed the hem of her attire a bit.

“The food shall be delivered to you in a moment,” the house-elf chirped at her direction and bowed. Then they snapped their fingers once and disappeared, surely Apparated, with the portmanteaus, surely to the attic. Lily was left alone in the room. She got up from the chair and went to the windows again. This Deemey would come to give her light breakfast soon and Lily didn’t know what to expect from that front. At least she wouldn’t be fed pasta this early in the day.

‘ _Every kidnapped person doesn’t have it this relaxed_ ’ Lily thought and touched the window glass. She noticed that this window could be opened if the person desired so. Would she like to get wet a bit? Lily went back by the hearth and gripped the armchair. She started to drag it towards the window but the chair turned out to be too heavy. Lily stopped that arduous work very quickly and stared at the ceiling.

‘ _I wish an Auror would perform a round here so that I could leave. Then these people would be persecuted in court. They aren’t allowed to do anything to me_.’ Lily tried to recall whatever her father had told her of kidnappings. Was someone demanding ransom from Robertson? Then a horrible thought occurred to her and Lily’s features took on a disturbed expression. No one would know if she was going to be killed or buried as a bone in this house’s backyard. Maybe she was enormously hated and she just wasn’t aware of this?

‘ _Anyhow, this has to do with the fact that I come from the future. They want to know how things are in the future. I wonder if I know the “Lord”_?’ But even when she tried to rack her brain and went through many familiar faces, she didn’t find anyone among them, that had been once dubbed as a Lord.

Deemey came to offer her food on a tray soon after this. The house-elf smelled of grey water and some washing agent but the food on the tray – butter, potatoes, pepper, mustard, preserved nuts and some meat – looked conclusively proper and smelled good when the cupola on it had been taken off. The tray was placed on the bedside table next to the bed and Lily stared at the house-elf while being stared at. 

“Eat as much as your heart desires. Ring the bell if you should want seconds,” the elf commented in a friendly manner and rubbed their hands together. Deemey was wearing an old piece of sheet that had been sewn like a bag on her. Lily didn’t let them out of her eyes and the atmosphere changed into awkwardness. The ears of the house-elf turned to arch along the top of their head and their great eyes shined.

“If miss has some…troubles then Deemey will listen and fix whatever she can…”

Lily was quiet for a moment. “…when will I get my nightgown back?”

The ears of the house-elf raised up in seconds and they started reassuring her: “It’ll be ready for miss this evening. Miss can don it immediately after it has been cleaned and fixed. It’ll take a few moments. Deemey will also later collect that shirt you’re wearing and every piece of clothing that needs some readjustments and take them off from your hands.”

Lily herself wouldn’t have started to fix anything and there were no chores for her so the phrasing amazed her a bit.

“One more question. If I stay here, where can I wash myself?”

The house-elf quieted down immediately and seemed to portray feelings of embarrassment. “Miss has been given the only room that hasn’t had a bathroom. Tibney will come give you water and a towel on top of the wash stand we shall bring here. You will also be given soap and a stool. There’s always warm water available, just ring the bell when you need it.”

Lily was astonished. Why was only she brought into the seemingly oldest room of the manor where she couldn’t even enjoy tap water? Why was everyone else allowed to enjoy modern innovations like running water and electricity when she was being offered an oil lamp and a fireplace? It amazed her but she didn’t start arguing about it with the house-elf who belonged to the lowest caste in the manor.

“Will I have to wash my clothes by myself?”

The house-elf looked confused and their mouth was slightly open. “Never. You aren’t expected to do anything, miss. Let Tibney and Deemey serve you in peace. It’s the will of the gentry here.”

Lily’s eyes flashed. “The gentry? What name will I refer them as?”

“You may call them Madam and Sir. If they won’t give you their names for use, you can always be quiet and only answer the questions they ask you.”

“And who’s the Lord?” Lily ogled the elf without a rest. They rubbed their hands together again.

“Deemey isn’t allowed to talk of the other guests with you, I’m sorry.” Saying this, the house-elf stared her right back in the eyes and there was pure good-will in their gaze. At least this elf wasn’t angry at her.

“…thanks, Deemey.” Lily gave up, her mouth pursed.

“You’re welcome, miss,” Deemey thanked her and clicked their fingers once. The scarf that had covered Lily’s eyes flew into the hands of the elf and there was a ‘pop’ when the elf disappeared.

‘ _I wonder if they went to get rid of it?_ ’ Lily thought quietly and climbed onto the bed to eat her meal.

* * *

Lily didn’t dare to venture out of her room because of the woman’s tone. She was possessed by such a thought that if she exited the room and would go and loiter around the hallways someone would shout at her and then the previous man would come give her a piece of his mind. She didn’t believe that the woman that had escorted her would hit her but she wasn’t sure of the other watchmen in the manor. It was quiet and there was no piano playing anymore. She hadn’t heard of anyone walking outside the room she had been given. Somehow it felt like she was in the least populated wing of the house. She wanted to go take a walk outside but she doubted anyone would let her. If she was a kidnapper, she’d hide herself from others surely.

Even a house-elf had more freedom than her. It vexed her.

She hadn’t been allowed to go out alone even with Robertson but at least she had had something to do and company. Those rules had been set for her safety. Here, the people probably weren’t interested in if she had something to do with a manner of things and if she could already perform magic. No, here she would no doubt hear about it afterwards if she adventured outside or even went to look for books. She quite possibly wasn’t allowed to visit the library of the house or borrow books from there.

On the edge of the bed, Lily tried to recall the rooms she had seen and tried to form a picture from the rooms she knew were there. There was at least one gallery downstairs where there were big paintings, one lounge room, that green one where she had been, a toilet and this room. They had no doubt walked past the other bedrooms or store rooms. And this was the only one with no proper bathroom, so that told her that she might have been in the oldest wing of the building.

Lily had rummaged the wardrobe after she had eaten and from there, she had found old moth repellents and an old oil lamp. There was no electricity in the room.

She lied on the covers and stared at the ceiling. it didn’t give her any new ideas or remove her anxiety colored with boredom. She could only purse her lips and frown in her frustration. At least these people fed her. But where would Lily get the certainty that this wasn’t her last meal? Maybe the ransom theory was truly right and she’d lose more basic rights progressively so that these people could threaten Robertson and the ministry that way? Maybe she’d find herself back in London, but in some dingy back alley where they sold children and drugs? Were there dungeons in this house? Maybe Lily would find herself there amongst criminals and other outlaws sooner or later.

‘ _Maybe it’s better that way. The Aurors will surely perform raids in London and at other places in the British Isles. If I can only get to a known city then I could assuredly run away? Maybe these people are stupid, maybe I’ll make it? If they don’t send the house-elves after me…_ ’ The thought made her wonder and terrified her. There she would be, running in London again without any shoes and trying to avoid this place’s house-elves who could perform who knows what magic.

‘ _That’s it!_ ’ Lily bounced up in the bed and stood on it. Hopefulness filled her. ‘ _Muggle police could catch me if I go to London! If I shout really hard in a known place or even in an alley then someone will come. At least the Muggles will summon their police and I’ll be admitted to some hospital again. There will be a case against these people! I should gather some evidence, surely the wizards these days collect fingerprints and DNA samples from everything? They must! Otherwise all the criminals would run free by just talking and lying about things._ ’

She had heard her father speak something about DNA samples and the Ministry criminal files. She had also watched TV and knew that if she gathered enough fool-proof evidence, they’d be examined in her favour. She ought to look for something, what could be a fool-proof evidence of this place, something that couldn’t be linked to other manors or places…

Were her moves being monitored? Lily had heard that some wizards had started using security cameras of their own. It wasn’t such a widespread custom in large parts of the Great Britain but maybe…

Lily eyed the corners of the ceiling. Then she jumped down from the bed and went to look behind the curtains, ogled at the curtain rod, went through the wardrobe’s rear, looked to both sides of the mirror and surveyed under the bed. There were no signs of any monitoring going on anywhere. No cameras, no recording wizarding equipment, nothing. Lily went back to the drapes and tried to tear a piece of cloth away without success. Then she got an idea. She ogled the white wallpaper above the wall panels. How many houses would have wallpaper like that? Would she be successful in getting a sample? Lily’s fingerprints would be on it but the piece could easily be carried away in her pocket to wait for better days.

She went to the chair immediately and tried, once again, to drag it next to the wall but this proved a very arduous task. She finally managed to get it next to the wardrobe. Lily climbed on the chair’s armrest and tried to look for the edge of the wallpaper behind the wardrobe. Such a thing happened to be right under her nose.

‘ _I’m glad I let my nails grow…or, it’s lucky no one ever had any nail clippers,_ ’ Lily thought when she tried to wedge an opening with the nail of her index finger. She succeeded in it and soon she tore a small piece of the wallpaper away. No one would look behind the wardrobe, not even the house-elf. Lily rocked the chair back into its own place, gasping, but with a piece of wallpaper firmly in her pocket. Now she had evidence and she had even left a mark.

All of this had taken some time. Lily didn’t have a clock in her room so the only way she could determine the passage of time was the window. It still rained heavily outside. as a matter of fact, the rain had only intensified from the morning.

‘ _Now I just wait…I’m not going to sleep here. I’ll figure something else out._ ’

What that something else was, she didn’t know.

* * *

They came to fetch her in the evening when Lily was drinking tea provided by a house-elf. She hadn’t touched the biscuits. Reaching the middle of her back, her glowing red hair, tinted with gold and copper, was slightly curled at the end and framed her face when Lily laid her teacup carefully on the tray on her nightstand. Momentary confusion took control of her when she realized that the house-elf who had come to fetch her was in the company of that light-haired woman. The woman’s dress hugged her waist and it descended to protect her feet. The woman’s pale face was without an expression when she said: “I came for you. He awaits your visit.”

“Oh…” Lily commented and slid off from the bed. As far as it was possible, privately she was going through a bit of a shock, which Lily couldn’t quell in a moment. Here was much awaited moment. Now she would get to know, what would happen to her, whether it be good or bad.

They started their walk away from the northern wing of the house. The house-elf closed the room’s door behind Lily and followed them last, as if in their wake. Lily had many thoughts that she wished to dress in words but it should all wait until she saw where she was being taken to. She glanced at the slim moving woman’s back that was embellished by the dark fabric of the dress. She had put her hair up in a do and didn’t speak at all. Lily strode after her with unsure steps and her gaze was sometimes caught by unknown wall ornaments and moving paintings. They walked past many rooms and finally arrived at the main stairway. It was wide and it was passed promptly. Lily pressed her right hand against the fabric of her shorts and rubbed it against the surface of the textile. Her hands were slightly wet from all the worrying. Walking past a grand hall, of which doors were open, Lily saw inside a man, whose hair was light, who was donning a dark attire and a walking stick. She blinked her eyes in wonder but couldn’t stay there to stare. Speech carried off from the hall and Lily was sure that there were other visitors in the house other than her.

Finally, they rounded a corner and passed by a large vase on a pedestal. Lily reckoned that they were in the exact opposite wing to hers. Here, the air didn’t smell quite as fresh as in her room, rather, there wafted a tiny odor of tobacco in the air.

The woman stopped by the last door and knocked on it twice. You could see an orchard, where the leaves of the apple trees nodded in the rain, from the window at the end of the corridor.

“Come inside,” a hoarse but somehow soft answer was heard and Lily frowned. The door opened at the hands of the woman but she didn’t go inside.

“It’s for you,” the woman whispered and gestured Lily to step into the room. Lily passed the threshold and noticed she had arrived into a bedroom. She heard a sound of a door being closed and swiftly turned around to see how the handle of the door was first pressed down but rose up in a smooth arch and the locking mechanism of the door locked the door. It was quiet. Lily turned around.

“Well then, welcome,” said the same voice to her right, by the window. Lily had never seen a man quite like him. His eyes were like giant shining beads and there was something cat-like in them. He didn’t have a protruding nose but he breathed air in and out evenly from two slits at the place of a nose.

“Sit,” the man commanded her and Lily thought she saw a tiny arc of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Where will I sit?” Lily asked and looked around her. There was a giant writing desk next to a clear wardrobe and in front of that desk was a lone chair. Right to this arrangement, there was a door that surely led to a bathing place. The place Lily didn’t have. Here, no one would ever, surely, bring a washing cabinet, Lily thought and stole a cursory glance at the man, who was moving towards her. The man swung his wand once and one of the logs next to the fireplace transformed into a chair. Lily sat on it and noticed that there was an unfinished meal on the desk. Soup, bread crusts, water, wine and some kind of a salad in a smaller cup.

“Are you hungry?” The man asked good-naturedly and stared her between Lily and the desk. His cheekbones were high and his eyes showed curiosity, or then he just wanted to be seen as interrogative. At least he hadn’t shouted at Lily first.

“I’m not,” Lily answered and the man corresponded with a quiet ‘hmm’ sounds. Lily felt the eyes of this tall and strange man on her and soon the man sat down on the writing desk’s chair. He leaned forward and scratched his chin. The wand he placed on the desk. Then he stared at Lily.

“You aren’t Emma Kaur, are you?”

Lily was seized by a chill and she blinked twice.

“I knew it. And this is most certainly yours?” The man raised his other hand, put it in his pocket and Lily’s breath shuddered.

Her pendant rose up from there.

“Hmm, yes, it’s apparently yours,” the man conformed and glanced at the ceiling with Lily’s pendant in his hand. “Aren’t you interested in how I got it?”

“You stole it?” Lily’s gaze turned strong and she took support from the chair. The man smiled shortly.

“Correct. But I didn’t do it. Someone else did it for me. Do you know why?” The man glanced at her again and took a much more relaxed position in his chair. Lily didn’t answer.

“I am Lord Voldemort. Do you know me?”

Lily recollected Robertson’s words. The very worst. _A terrorist. A racist_. _A_ _murderer_.

Voldemort peered at her, calm and arms lax on the armrests of the chair. “You have been told of who I am. Although, I’m not a terrorist.”

Lily took fright. Her mouth slumped open and the words cascaded from her. “Can you read minds?”

“Yes, I can. That’s why you don’t need to drink that.” Voldemort pointed towards a vial that contained some colourless substance on his desk. “Do you know what that is?”

It could only be one medium. The thought scared Lily. “Veritaserum.”

“Correct.” Voldemort clapped his hands three times and smiled. The pitter-patter of the rain didn’t carry into this room, unlike at Lily’s lonely accommodations. Two thick velvet green drapes enveloped the window from both sides. She glanced at the passage in front of the fireplace and which led to elsewhere. Was this room connected to some other bedroom? Why?

“I don’t know why it leads to another bedroom. It’s not in use at the moment, don’t worry. No one else will hear this conversation,” Voldemort said calmly with a slightly hoarse voice. He coughed once and brought the wine glass to his lips and sipped from it. Lily peered around the room but tried not to move her head.

“Why was I kidnapped?” Lily asked, unsure, and she had to put her hands in her lap because she kept gripping the rim of the chair.

Voldemort slipped his wand into his sleeve and laid the wine glass down. “Because I need to know a certain thing. You may have forgotten it so I will look into your mind a bit. I’m not interested in private matters and won’t comment on them,” he added in emphasis after seeing Lily’s face. The conversation, which had flowed swiftly, became stuck. Lily bit her cheek imperceptibly and let her gaze remain on the floor. She wasn’t able to peer at the man for long. You got an odd impression of him. As if he had awaited this meeting for a long time (Lily’s day of waiting had been longer to her mind), but at the same time he dithered in delivering some things to speech. He was calculating. Yes, he was a murderer. Lily still waited for some blow, some sign of madness, and she was ready to struggle free.

“I have much to lose, _Emma_. Try to understand,” Voldemort said at last and fixed his posture. “You need to look me into the eyes for the entire time. Your thoughts don’t bother me, I can bypass them easily.”

“Oh…” Lily didn’t know what to say to all of this. She felt like she had been shocked silent. “Don’t you want to kill me?”

Voldemort’s other brow rose and he stared the girl for a few moments. Then he opened his mouth and said: “No, you have much to give me.”

Lily didn’t dare to say anything else but answered to the observance directed at her with her own gaze. Voldemort snorted.

“We shall start,” he said and leaned forward in his chair. Lily began to feel a push in her mind. As if someone had been pushing her away. Her first thought was cut off. Then another. The third was let be. First the push came as if from right and then from the middle of her consciousness. It was a disgusting feeling and Lily felt like she herself was being eagerly pulled away. She lost a bit of her consciousness when Voldemort, apparently, seemed to drag something out from her mind. A picture flashed in Lily’s mind. She saw how she ate breakfast with Robertson. Then the picture disappeared and Lily tried to blink fast so that her eyes wouldn’t dry.

The next picture flashed in her mind a couple of minutes later. She saw a picture of their cat and then that too got cut off.

 _‘What is he looking for?’_ Lily wondered and felt that intolerable feeling again, as if she was being put aside in her own mind. Lily had never felt like this. ‘ _’Is this torture_?” Came to her mind. That continued for many minutes until Voldemort’s expression hardened. His eyes squinted and he clasped his hands together and leaned forward more. The strange feeling stopped.

“Let’s take a break. I need to get something,” Voldemort rose up from his chair and Lily startled. She remembered how she had had to down potions at the hospital and then two men had gone through her memories. They had done it softly and slowly and Lily hadn’t felt half of what this session awakened in her.

Voldemort went behind Lily and Lily heard a drawer being dragged open. She turned around to look how the man went through his nightstand and took out a lone vial. Lilac liquid splashed in its lining when it was transported onto the desk.

Then Lily saw a giant snake.

From below the bed, there glimpsed a large head and this snake licked the air with its tongue. Voldemort turned to face it and hissed at it a couple of times. Lily was still from fright. She had never seen a snake that big. ‘ _What the hell…?_ ’

The snake disappeared below the bed again. Lily heard how it moved against the floor boards and then it got silent below.

 _‘Is that his pet?!’_ Lily was shocked and she turned towards the desk. Voldemort snapped his fingers and a glass appeared in them. Lily’s deductions turned out to be right when Voldemort opened the door next to the desk and inside, a bathroom was shown, from which Lily saw only a corner and the side of a mirror cabinet. There was splashing of water. The man took the glass under a tap and soon joined Lily’s company and closed the bathroom door.

“This is for clarifying the mind. It achieves a calming state and your thoughts are more in control with it. Three drops mixed with water ought to do,” Voldemort said and filled the pipette in his fingers with lilac liquid. He measured precisely three drops into the glass of water and squirted the rest back into the vial. Lily took the offered glass and stared at its contents.

“It’s safe. No, I won’t drink it right now,” Voldemort added when Lily’s gaze rose up onto him.

‘ _If this is poison, I’m a goner now_ …,’ Lily bemoaned in her mind. She wouldn’t manage to run away from this room. If it was poisonous, she would be fed in pieces to the snake that lived under the bed, of that, she was sure. There wouldn’t be any evidence left. There wouldn’t be any body or blood. This man would surely know how to prepare her so that it wouldn’t be messy.

Lily drank the concoction and grimaced. She was left to hold the glass in her hands.

“Let’s wait for five minutes,” Voldemort remarked and leaned back in the desk chair. Time flowed by and Lily, only now, heard the first sounds of rain in the room. She glanced at the window and the ever-darkening scenery. The clouds were as grey as before but things started growing dark at the horizon.

“It’s going to be a thunder storm,” Voldemort said, looking out from the window. “Well then, let us begin again. Recline back, it’s much more comfortable that way.”

Lily didn’t recline back but tried to stare Voldemort’s neck. She heard a sigh. He didn’t quite manage to control the irritation in his voice. “I shall start.”

Again, the same rollercoaster with Lily’s feelings. Again, she was pushed aside but now the effect was softer. She no longer thought of the pull in panic but could relax. As if her thoughts didn’t quite catch onto any subject. Time passed.

Voldemort startled. His eyes grew wider and he grabbed Lily by the chin. Large ruby red eyes, that had golden specks dance in them, looked for answers to, probably, silent questions and Lily felt unsafe. She was also puzzled. Voldemort squeezed her cheeks and his mouth opened.

“You are Harry Potter’s daughter.”

That simple. It didn’t take time, when she was let go. Voldemort leaned back in his chair and seemed to ponder something. He rubbed his own chin with his fingers and it was apparent he was irritated.

“Harry Potter will become someone.”

“He’s an Auror,” Lily added, suddenly pallid.

“So, Harry Potter doesn’t die for many years. He has a child!” Voldemort laughed. “And you don’t know me. You hadn’t even heard of me.”

“I maybe have, I just don’t remember,” Lily added again, very swiftly and raised her hands in front of her.

“But that means that there’s no way this could work. Why haven’t you heard of me? Every wizarding folk in this country has heard of Lord Voldemort, from babies to elderly.”

Lily was amazed by the small-talk’s sudden circulation to the man’s self-portrait. “So, you want to be known?”

“Be quiet for a moment,” Voldemort quipped and his stare returned to the window. Lily’s ears were working to hear of the snake and she shut her mouth completely. She even tried to breathe quietly. Ultimately, Lily lowered her hands into her lap and stared at her feet. Her black shoes shined in the room’s lights. Lily squeezed her hands into fists. She hadn’t done anything bad; she had only talked. You couldn’t punish her from that.

“I need a Pensieve. I need to see better than just tenuous visualizations. I need to see substantial memories. I will look through your entire life.”

Lily cringed. “My- my entire life? Wholly? But that’ll take-”

“A long time. It’ll take a long time,” Voldemort said to her. “Well, at least I got some use for that room now…”

‘ _A room…?_ ’ Lily frowned. She didn’t understand.

“You will move next to my room. I will ask the house-elves to move your necessities there.” Voldemort stood up and wiped his clothes a bit. He gestured for Lily to follow, which she did, a bit curious. Voldemort went to that small passage that opened up on the right side of the room’s front door and they walked past the fireplace to a wooden door. Turning the handle, Lily smelled stale air and dust. Her face fell. This surely hadn’t been cleaned in months. Lily didn’t step past Voldemort but stayed behind him.

There was a fireplace behind the door and a high ceiling without a lamp opened up. On the left wall, there stood out a window and dusty velvety drapes and there was an old bed, that had been wrapped in dust sheets, in the middle of the room.

“Hmm…,” Voldemort mumbled by himself and viewed the floor. “This place should be cleaned.”

Voldemort’s clothes flicked Lily’s nose when he turned around and walked quickly past the corner. Lily was left to stare after him and then her gaze slowly turned over to her accommodations. There was a huge wardrobe next to the bed. Lily took steps into the room and noticed that her shows left footprints in the dust. You could hear sharp jingle from Voldemort’s room but Lily didn’t care about it. She walked to the dark wardrobe and opened its door. Inside, you could smell some product and you found loads of old fur coats. In their legroom, had been turbocharged a couple of hat boxes on which there was a film of dust. Lily stared at a light blue striped box and closed the door then. She took steps in the darkness and dashed to the great window that had its curtains shut.

‘ _You need to air this place…_ ’ Lily marveled at the drapes but they too smelled of dust. Voldemort cropped up from behind the door.

“A house-elf will come clean it today. By the way, you can’t come over to my side except when called. Nagini is dangerous to everyone else except me. You could die if you annoy her.”

Lily’s face turned sour. ‘ _I doubt I could even do anything to it…are there any safety exits for people like me in this house?_ ’

Lily noticed a door next to the fireplace. Voldemort eyed her when he walked to it and opened it.

A bathroom. There was a tub there. Lily’s face brightened. “You can wash yourself here!”

“Of course, you can. You can do that in every room of this house,” Voldemort said, frowning.

“You can’t. My old room didn’t have washing facilities.”

“Oh…” He didn’t have anything to add there. “You probably find yourself spending most of your time in your room. You definitely cannot walk outside or be in the scenery most of the time. Lucius gets visitors intermittently.”

‘ _Lucius_ …’She had heard it somewhere. Some popular person but not in a good way…I wonder who that was? Lily pondered it while walking in front of Voldemort and was just about to say something when there were three ‘pop’ sounds. She turned around the look where Voldemort stared.

House-elves had appeared in the space. One took care of the dust; another took the dust sheets away from the furniture and the third opened the window and started to take down the drapes. Rain droplets hit that invisible protective barrier again and the floor boards didn’t get wet at all.

“Your room will be ready soon. I will leave you to it…” Voldemort said clearly and shut the door in front of Lily’s nose. Lily smelled wet air and then something exploded in the fire place. A thick dust clouds filled the space.

‘ _They haven’t swept here,_ ’ Lily thought, coughing, as the house-elves screamed.

* * *

The room was ready by ten o’clock that evening. Lily’s meal was brought to her into her bed and a house-elf stayed next to the wardrobe for the duration of the eating. Lily had already washed herself (she had tried to be careful with the wall panels and surveyed that the pictures in the washing space didn’t move) and she was wearing her washed and ironed nightgown. It smelled of washing agent and fresh air. As evening snack, she had sandwiches and hot chocolate. It hadn’t been brewed in milk but in water and due to this, Lily drank it quietly and didn’t want to complain about such a small thing. If the taste of hot chocolate was her biggest worry, she was doing fine, Lily thought.

One house-elf had emptied the wardrobe of the fur coats (they had probably been moved into some other space that wasn’t in use) and Lily’s new clothes had been put into it. This elf had also been the one to take the pieces of clothing that needed fixing or shortening, and Lily had been told that she would get them back the come morning. This house-elf had was also the one that had taken Lily’s measurements.

The sandwiches tasted mustardy and there was nothing but ham and cheese on them. However, they filled her belly as Lily lounged in the bed while the logs in the fireplace snapped and radiated warmth into the ventilated space.

The window was covered by two white curtains and there was a lamp emitting light on Lily’s nightstand. The accommodations were quite cozy when even the old, on the fritz carpets had been changed to new oriental ones.

The house-elf took Lily’s tray and excused itself while Lily licked her fingers. There was a canopy on the bed so she didn’t see the ceiling but only stared at this dark rectangle, expressionless. She thought of the fireplace that had crackled just a few moments ago and then remembered that she had been brought her own firewood basket and fireplace equipment.

‘ _Could the fire in the hearth expand while I sleep? The embers are dying down already…_ ’

She didn’t dare to sleep before the embers would be completely exhausted. Rumble was heard outside and the wind whipped the branches of a nearby tree against her window. There was light emanating from under Voldemort’s door to her side but Lily heard no sound. She hadn’t tried to open the door because she had been forbidden from doing so but what if she heard something useful? Something, which would work in court against these creeps? And what did he mean they were going to watch through her entire life? That was said to be illegal! They had said so to her in St Mungo’s.

Lily smelled something fishy in the air. Something was wrong and, yes, she would get out of here. If Aurors came here, she would leave with them. Maybe there would be faces she recognized?Lily didn’t know which theory or hope she should keep up and alive. She rubbed her hands together and huddled closely under the sheets. They too had been changed in the previous hassle. Lily didn’t turn the lamp off but turned her head sideways and waited for sleep to come.

.

.

.

_“Harry Potter? Harry Potter! Do you have any comment on-”_

_“No, no I don’t. Leave.”_

_“But is the investigation still going? It has been already-”_

_“Yes, I know, I know. Please leave.” Her father’s face was so pallid and he seemed irritated._

_“Dad?” Lily asked, perplexed, and saw her own arm reach for the man. No one had clear facial features and everything was conveyed through light and smoke. The smell of something burning. Something creaked._

_“Please leave, we want to be alone. This is getting investigated as we speak.”_

_“But is it possible that this could happen to other residents of the wizarding Britain?” The throng seemed to become agitated, then it got quiet, when her father raised his hand up._

_“These are tough times for my family. It has been so long already…we’re in contact with other countries’ Ministries. It could be a series of kidnappings.”_

_“Yes, but-”_

_Lily saw askance something next to her. She carefully turned her head to the side and marked down a strange woman. This woman was with a baby carriage, with a child. The woman didn’t comment, just stood by Lily and stared at the happenings without a clear expression. Lily tried to touch the woman but her hand turned to smoke and went through her. In panic, she touched her own face and then noticed she was lying on a floor. When she rose up, she saw herself sleeping in the bed, under the blankets, warm, even though she was bloody cold._

_“Dad? Dad!” Lily shouted and rubbed her arms. She started to walk to and fro and she saw herself clearly asleep, so how could she be out of her body…?_

_Then the door to Voldemort’s room opened. Lily was in front of her fireplace and didn’t see into the room. There was no longer any light shining to her side from there._

_“You are Harry Potter’s daughter…” Lily startled at this voice and fell down, trying to stumble away from the door. She hit her head and-_

“Oh!” Lily stood up quickly from underneath the blankets. Her back was full of sweat droplets as was her forehead. Her hands shook and Lily touched herself intensely from every side. She rubbed her hands against her sides and stared at the lamp, the window and finally the door. It was dark.

 _‘What the hell?’_ She had never seen a dream like that. She only smelled beeswax, wine vinegar and the smoke from the hearth. It was too hot in the room.

Lily pressed her right hand to her bosom when she remembered that her pendant was no longer with her. She jumped out of the bed and walked over to the window. Dragging a curtain back, she watched the undulating yard and its puddles. Far away on the other side of the manor’s gardens, the sun colored the scenery in rising arc. The fog grasped the trees and the earth and the growths farthest away were entirely grey and drab. Otherwise Lily saw small growth here and there and the lake misted. The clock was definitely something in the wee hours.

She shut the curtains again and slumped to the ground in front of them. Then she remembered falling in the dream and eyed the place where this had happened.

Lily stayed closely in the bed, awake, until the lamps on Voldemort’s side turned on and there was light seeking out the darkness on Lily’s side again.

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fanfiction before CC was a thing in anyone's mind and I refuse to let go of it even though it bares many resemblances with that work. This is mostly for one rare pairing, Voldemort/Lily Luna, which has occupied my mind for years.  
> This entire work has been beta-read by crystalphi.


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